Dragged Away
by ecarden
Summary: Graduation Day was the day everything changed. It's a whole new world, in a whole new city. Unfortunately, old friends and old enemies don't forget you just because you leave town. Especially if a secret government organization makes you go back.
1. Chapter 1

Fear burned through James' veins. This was an entirely reasonable reaction to waking up in handcuffs, a headbag and a strange place. The cold voiced stranger explaining his misdeeds to him didn't help. The man sounded like a James Bond villain, or an actor in one of those crusty actors in the PBS specials which were constantly playing in the waiting room on the theory that they helped childhood mental development or some other such bullshit.

James' attempts at protest were met with calm refutations. Appeals for freedom, attorneys, or due process brought no amusement to that voice, but rather simple denials. He was not in the custody of police, but something far, far worse. Of that he was certain.

"There are an infinite number of ways this can go. Only one of the reasonably likely ways has you leave this room alive. You tell me where you hid the wealth you have been paid for selling foster children to the cult of the demon Lurcona. In return, I choose to let you go. Of course you won't continue to work for Social Services. I've already seen to that. But they're unlikely to charge you. Rather they will simply believe you were so incompetent you didn't notice the disappearance of so many of your charges."

James tried to delay, vacillate, distract. The voice cut him off. "The other likely options all end with your death, after various amounts of screaming."

His face went white under the bag and he spoke desperately, gasping through the thick material of the bag, hot breath reflecting back against his face, condensation mixing with the sweat pouring off him. Of course, he didn't tell the man everything, but the accounts and passwords would get him his freedom and then he could dig up the gold hidden in his yard. That would be enough to get him out of this city. He'd have to buy a new name, but he could begin again. There were always opportunities for a man who didn't mind getting his hands dirty.

Steps walked away without another word. "Hey! What about me?" James yelled through the bag.

"We'll see if the information you gave is good."

A door opened and closed. James pulled hard on the cuffs, writhing around, attempting to break himself free, or, at least, slide the cuffs under his legs so he could get them in front of him. It turned out he was not flexible enough for that. In the twenty minutes his captor was gone he managed to get up and get the handcuffs through one leg. This left him in a worse position than before, especially when he accidentally nutted himself, collapsing forward, he smashed his nose badly on the stone floor. Curled on the floor, tears of pain and fear pouring from his eyes, blood and snot spilling from his nose, he almost choked to death on the headbag.

Only his captor's return prevented that. James almost passed out when he felt steel press against his throat, cutting through the cord sealing the bag. The bag came loose and James blinked helplessly against tears and a suddenly harsh light. Eyes locked on his captor he saw a surprisingly young man, clean-shaven, with short hair, dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with a sport jacket.

James might have taken him for a particularly stuffy college or graduate student, but for the pistol holstered at his waist and the deadly looking knife sheathed on his other hip. The knife especially drew James' eyes as he saw the heavy metal spikes surrounding its handle. That was a knife meant to rip a man apart in many ways. A weapon for a murderer or a torturer. The automatic twitch to clear the line of motion every time his suit jacket got into a position where it might block his reach for either weapon bespoke a man who expected to need to use his weapons, even here, in the heart of his power.

Thin black gloves covered his hands like a second skin, James wasn't sure if they were to prevent fingerprints, or served some other, more sinister, function. Given the man had a dungeon, his inclination was to believe the latter, but maybe he just didn't like cleaning blood out from under his nails (it said something about the state of James's predicament that that did not sound like a 'more sinister' option).

James' interest did not go unnoticed by his captor, but the man did not smile, merely letting his left hand fall to caress the black handle of his blade as he spoke. The words escaped James, due to pants (and given his circumstances) hands wetting terror.

"What did you say?" he asked nasally, nose still blocked with blood, when he could no longer stand his captors calm staring and waiting for his response.

"Where's the rest of the money you were paid?"

"I told you—"

"We obliterated the cult you were supplying and found their records. I know exactly how much they paid you. Now, where is the rest of it?"

James folded and provided the location of the gold. A middle aged man could begin again in a new place, even with no resources. A dead one could not. His captor nodded and left. This time he was gone for longer, but left the headbag off. There was enough time to complete a close examination of his jail cell, even for a man who was hobbled.

Unfortunately, the walls were solid grey stone and there were no windows. The door was solid oak and quite invulnerable to any force James could bring forth, especially in his current hunched and weakened condition. The only interesting thing in the entire cell went unnoticed by James, because he was unable to look up with his hands chained together between his legs.

The man finally returned, carrying a heavy axe in addition to his other weapons. James has considered trying to rush him when he returned, though the middle aged and admittedly paunchy man probably would not have been a match for his captor even if unshackled and that was ignoring the problem of everyone else in…wherever he was. Therefore he'd decided on compliance on the theory that hopefully the man who could destroy a cult of demon worshippers would keep his word. The axe put that theory in severe doubt.

"What's with the axe?" he asked,

"I'm going to execute you now. An axe is the ritually required weapon. As is knowledge that you're going to be executed and why. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with further discussion."

"You said—"

"I could give you an explanation about how I said that was one path, not that it was the one I was going to walk, but, in all honesty, that does not matter. I would have killed you even if an explicit promise of your safety had somehow been extracted from me. You were assigned responsibility for the care and safety of abused and abandoned children. You chose to sell nineteen of those children to a cult of demon worshippers. I don't know if you actually knew they would feed them to a demon, but you knew you were doing nothing good. You are undoubtedly guilty of felony murder. You are undoubtedly guilty of human trafficking. You are undoubtedly guilty of enslaving children. You have also betrayed your employer and your sworn duty. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

James stared up at the man hunched slightly, face bloody and wrecked with tears. The best he could muster was a soft, sobbing 'please…'

That was insufficient to halt a quick kick from knocking him onto his back. Before he recovered from the stunning impact of his skull on the stone of the floor, his captor was in position above him. James' eyes were focused on the falling axe, so much that even staring straight up he did not see the intricate and mystical signs painted on the paper which was stretched across the ceiling, before the axe fell.

Nor afterwards, obviously.

However, those signs swallowed down his death, his execution in the old style, as the consummation of five days of elaborate and often unpleasant ritual. The summoned and bound guardian spirit would protect his home.

A quick word with Quintin Cavendish, the butler, on the way out ensured the body would be taken care of. The efficient butler also took the axe off him to be cleaned, sharpened, the nick he'd put into it by pounding it straight through a throat into a stone floor would be dealt with and it would be packed away for him when he next needed it. Cavendishes were nothing if not efficient. They would not have survived so many generations in service to his family were that not true.

With that business complete, he headed for his quarters at the top of the mansion. The view was fantastic, straight over the fountain in the courtyard, out over the expansive grounds. However as he looked out over his domain, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's mood was bleak. The chill landscape, not quite ready to thaw suited his mood well.

The man's death had been necessary. The Order of Taraka had not stopped sending assassins. The last one had made it into the house, killing two of the staff before being hacked to pieces. The assassin's guild was simply not taking the hint. Whichever of the factions had paid them had paid for a guaranteed contract and the guild kept coming. His best efforts to find out anything about the group were frustrated by its disorganized and chaotic nature. There was some sort of central control. There had to be, if only to inform members of the contracts, but so far he had come up empty. Desperate ideas were beginning to seem reasonable and that meant that it was time to shore up defenses until actually reasonable ideas could be found.

The cult had unfortunately invested almost all of their wealth in demonically tainted mystical artifacts. It had made tracking and dealing with them easy, but meant that eliminating them had not helped resolve the financial difficulties refitting the mansion with bullet-resistant glass and additional electronic defenses had created. Still, with what he'd taken from the child-seller, they were almost back where they'd been financially and far better off security-wise, on both a mystical and a mundane level.

None of which changed the fact that he had Human blood on his hands (and face), once again. Some part of him laughed, bitterly, filled with self-mockery and self-hatred, remembering the boy who'd tried to turn Faith over to the Council for accidentally killing someone. The rest of him howled for the loss of that innocent boy. What was left of him that anyone would recog—

That thought vanished as cool arms twined around his waist and lips pressed against his neck, a tongue flicking out to trace the line of his carotid. Fire rose through him as he remembered that the ritual had required him to remain 'pure' for five days. With breasts pressed against his back and a tongue pressed to his skin, that suddenly seemed like a _very_ long time.

Still it wouldn't do to seem _too_ eager. He wasn't that desperately needy boy any longer. _Or so you like to pretend_ , a voice whispered in the back of his mind. With her hands on his belt, he found he could ignore the voice easily enough. "Aren't you supposed to be—" _Shit_ , _what had she been doing? It wasn't a staff training day and they didn't have any operations coming up. None of their outside allies were on the grounds until the security upgrade was complete, so she couldn't have been helping them, but she was supposed to be—RIGHT,_ he continued almost smoothly enough that the stutter could be passed off as a badly placed breath, "planning the menu for our grand re-opening," this pause contained just a hint of sarcasm as he used the term she'd insisted upon, "gala?"

"I smelled blood," she rose up onto her tiptoes, breasts pressing more firmly into his back as her tongue licked a drop of spatter from his cheek. Only her hands pulling him back kept him from stumbling forward. No matter how many times he experienced it, it was still shocking to experience superhuman strength from such a slender frame. "I had to make sure my puddin' was all right."

His lips twitched at her explanation. "You can tell whose blood it is by smell too, you know."

"I can?!" her excited squeal pulled forth the smile he'd been trying to control. He could never tell when she was playing stupid to get her way and when she actually didn't understand something. In the end, it hardly mattered, she was sunshine in the darkness after the Council and Slayers alike had fired him.

A slow turn, which she had to loosen her grip to permit and he was face to face with her. With the blood on her tongue, she naturally had her vamp face on. The first time he'd seen it, he'd flinched away. That had taken away his sunshine for almost three days. And it had taken a month before he'd managed to convince her to show it to him again. The fact that she now wore it unselfconsciously in front of him, without fear that he secretly thought it, or she, was ugly was something he took immense pride in. Golden eyes flashed with lust and he couldn't resist the urge to drop a quick kiss on her pronounced forehead.

A purr slipped from her lips as he bent further down to kiss her more properly. She shook off her game face (as kissing while she had vampire face on tended to lead to accidental cuts on the lips and/or tongue) and stared up at him. Harmony Kendall's usual features were lovely as well, of course and as she pulled him back to the bed, taking care to place his holstered weapons outside the range of even their more athletic bedroom activities (one accidental discharge had been enough and resulted in no end of jokes). He realized that five days had been a _long_ time for her as well.

 ** _Author's Note: Okay, I promise that will all make sense. Eventually. Probably._**

 ** _Maybe I shouldn't have promised that. Next chapter: LOTS OF TALKING_**


	2. Chapter 2

The knock which woke him was Cavendish's three precise raps. Almost everyone else used the buzzer, but the butler had his ways and trying to convince the man to change was futile. The fact that he entered without waiting for Wesley to wake and invite him in meant the situation was desperate. It wasn't the duress signal, but undoubtedly there was a situation somewhere. Hardly a surprise. He'd chosen Cleveland because there was a Hellmouth in the city. That attracted trouble like light brought moths. It was his accepted job to turn that light into a metaphorical bug zapper and a literal demon zapper.

As he sat up, Harmony's arms tightened around his waist, lips pressed against a twisting scar on his shoulder. "Kiss it better," she muttered into his skin. His room was heated and the blankets were thick, but with Harmony pressed against him, acting as a heat sink, he was a little chilly, especially with his blankets puddled around his waist.

Cavendish held out a dressing robe and waited. So the situation was urgent, but not desperate. Carefully disentangling himself, Wesley stepped into the robe and belted it shut around his waist. His fingers were as nimble as his sleepy brain let them be, but he still itched to reach for his gloves. There was no need to hide from Cavendish, but he still wanted to.

Instead he spoke, "What's the situation?" he asked, turning to face the butler. Cavendish had always been fit, but age had given him a bit of a paunch around the middle, despite a workout routine which would have left Wesley groaning on the floor. The older man's hair had long since gone grey and now beginning to thin, Wesley had never seen him outside a sharply pressed suit, though these days his face was quite wrinkled. Some part of Wesley always expected the old man to whip off his skin, iron it nice and flat then put it back. _God, I'm gruesome today._

"She woke up, while Jane was on-shift."

"Jane?"

"Fine. She was more than able to take a woman who'd just woken up from a coma, even a Slayer."

Wesley nodded, grateful he'd insisted that all the staff train with Harmony. It was always difficult to properly respond to superhuman strength and speed, but practice helped and a Vampire was as close to a Slayer as he could manage.

Harmony was a heavy sleeper, especially having been up all day. That was probably a good thing as throwing a Vampire at a Vampire Slayer tended to result in violence. "I'll be down as soon as I get dressed. If you could have a taser and a stun gun ready for me, I'd appreciate that."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you Cavendish," Wesley said as he headed for his closet. After a moment's thought, he went with a dark suit, but again left off the tie. Meeting with Faith, he didn't actually want a makeshift noose around his neck. The jacket would hide the bulk of the weaponry well enough. He might wish for better less-lethal weaponry as he wasn't entirely sure how a Slayer, even one fresh out of a coma would react to a blast of electricity. It was the best he had, however, unless he was willing to simply kill her, which would have been far more easily done while she was comatose.

The gloves went on as well. They'd come off when the moment was right, but not at this first meeting. Or re-meeting. He grabbed his 'Faith-bag,' black leather containing everything he expected to need at this meeting. Despite what the doctors had said, he'd known she'd wake up. After a moment of thought, he retrieved the dagger he usually wore and its custom made sheath and added it to the bag.

He dropped a kiss on Harmony's forehead, nimbly dodging the automatic hug that sought to pull her teddy back into bed with her and tucked her in. The quarters he shared with Harmony were comfortably appointed, if somewhat…sparklier than he'd expected. The prevalence of pink and unicorns was also something of a surprise. Much of the rest of the mansion however was almost bare as they'd had to clear out both furniture and decorations for either not being designed for humanoid physiology or for being simply disturbing (and occasionally causing mind-bending insanity in Humans)…

Stealing the Scourge's main base of operations in Cleveland had seemed like a good idea at the time, but he had to admit that the cleanup had proven surprisingly tedious.

Admittedly, he could have just let Harmony loose to redecorate to her hearts content. And while he was fine with that in their quarters, mostly, there was a certain image he was looking to project in the public spaces and unicorns simply didn't fit it. So he walked through bare walled halls, collected his weapons from the butler (and, though he pretended not to notice, he also collected the butler, who had no intention of letting Wesley face down the rogue Slayer on his own) and walked to the wing he'd had repurposed to act as an infirmary. Fortunately, it was rare that they would need space to treat thirty casualties, but it was better to have it and not need it, than the reverse.

All of the staff had medical training, but as he walked into the infirmary he was grateful it had been Jane in there when Faith woke up. Cavendish's daughter had made it through the medical training with a bored competence that vanished when you gave her weapons, replaced with an eager bloodthirstiness that was honestly a bit worrisome to see. Taller than Cavendish, if shorter than Wesley, she met him at the entrance to the open white space of the infirmary. A pair of other Cavendishes, country cousins, not the polished household versions of the family, were standing outside the closed door to Faith's room, one holding a taser, the other a heavy shotgun. Wes nodded at their precautions and at Jane.

He was unsurprised to see finger sized bruises on Jane's skin. Faith was strong and Jane had the pale skin so common in redheads, bruising terribly after, or even during, training sessions. The blood on her knuckles, not her blood, was equally unsurprising. "Thank you, Jane," Wesley said. "If you'd be so good as to get some food for our guest, I'm sure she's hungry after her nap."

Jane's look was exquisitely communicative of what she thought of that idea. All of the Cavendishes could swear so eloquently with their eyes, probably because they were denied the opportunity to swear with their lips. Interactions between them and Faith should prove interesting. Not that Jane needed any encouragement towards un-Cavendish behavior, but under the father's eye, she did not actually say anything except "Yes, sir."

Wes walked over to Faith's room, a bedroom they hadn't ripped out when they'd converted most of this wing into an infirmary, it was comfortable enough, but with the solid construction of the mansion it would probably work as a jail cell, even for a Slayer. A quick glance at the screen connected to the hidden camera, the same setup he had in the actual cells, made it clear Faith was in the hospital bed.

"She tried to get out of bed, fell over and then got back in the bed. We think she grabbed something though. Might be a pen or something," one of the guards said.

"Understood." Wesley waved them all back, even Cavendish, who went with a look that was even more communicative than his daughter's though rather than conveying pique, it conveyed worry and a mocking statement regarding the wounds inflicted on young men too arrogant to heed sound advice from their elders.

A deep breath to steady him, a focus stolen from meditation techniques intended for a Slayer, and he entered the room calmly, closing the door behind him without ever taking his eye from the woman on the bed.

It was difficult to equate the wan and weakened creature before him with the Slayer who had outmatched him at every turn, who had failed to learn, just as he had failed to teach. Black hair fanned about her head like a tainted halo, the only color on her skin was the blood under her nose from Jane's blow, but the wound had already stopped bleeding. _Slayer healing. Wish I had—_

Her eyes sparked with recognition and hostility. "Well, well, well, Princess! I figured the Council had finally managed to catch me, what with the British Bitch. But who'd have thought they'd let Head Boy interview the diabolic rogue slayer? Closing out the file on your Slayer? I know how much you like paperwork," her smirk was a cruel thing.

"Do you really imagine the Council would have let you wake up? When all it would take is a little 'accident' to get them a new, hopefully more biddable Slayer? Come now, Faith, I thought you were the cynical one and I was the naïve one." He took a seat and let the bag thump to the floor beside him. A breath forced his body to relax, show none of the tension she would take as either threat, or fear.

"Ha! So the Council finally got its head out of its ass and fired you?"

"I don't know about the former, but the latter is certainly correct," Wes agreed, unperturbed.

"Huh?" Faith was usually quicker than that.

"Yes, I was fired. However, I would not say that the Council has gotten its head out of its ass."

Faith's eyes widened at his use of the profanity, minor as it had been. "Fired you, didn't they?"

"Indeed, which is some evidence of competence, however their ongoing civil war and embarrassingly ineffectual search for you would seem to push the other way."

"Civil war, seriously? A bunch of British stuffed shirts?"

"Oh yes. The factions have not descended into open warfare, yet, but with Buffy refusing all contact, you disappeared and no new Slayer called, the Council is suffering a…identity crisis. Which it is attempting to solve with argument, spells, poison and assassination. Ah, politics."

Faith's eyes narrowed. This was not how she'd expected this conversation to go. Wesley on the other hand had had seven months to consider and knew what and who he was dealing with. "So, how'd the whole graduation thing work out for everyone?"

"Badly."

Faith grinned. "Oh? Did B not enjoy the end of high school? I thought it would have been the highlight for the class defender."

"She was named class protector, but that is neither here nor there. No, she did not enjoy it, any more than I, or the Mayor did. Well, perhaps somewhat more than the rest of us, as she emerged alive and mostly uninjured. Still, after seven months, most wounds heal." Wes leaned back in his chair, eyes hooded to watch Faith's reaction to that.

"The Mayor?" she asked, voice bleak.

"Dead. He left this for you," Wes produced a VHS tape from the bag without ever taking his eyes off Faith. "There's a VCR with the TV. I can put it in if—"

"I'll look at it later," she said, snatching the tape from him, then putting it on her bedside table and resolutely not looking at it, but Wes couldn't help noticing that she'd placed it carefully down, rather than dropped it and she'd placed it on the other side, where he'd have to go through, or around, her to get to it.

"As you like."

"See, I knew you'd learn, eventually," her voice was almost the sultry purr he remembered.

"Experience teaches everyone. What it teaches us depends on us, as much as the experience."

Faith laughed. "Very profound. Tell me Swami, what's the sound of one hand ripping off your balls?"

"Squelch."

Faith's brows went up. "You know that from experience, Wes? Can't say I'd be surprised, you always struck me as ballless. I can't imagine why Giles let you take point on this little interrogation."

"Giles?" Wes asked, honestly confused.

"Come on, don't tell me that the G-Man got wasted. I liked him, he reminded me of my old Watcher," her smirk was sharp as the dagger in her bag. "my _real_ Watcher."

"No, as far as I know, Giles is fine. But I fail to see—Oh, you think you're in Buffy's custody. Alas, no. Do you remember Buffy as having any medical equipment, or rooms to spare, or British assistants?"

"Besides you and G, nah. But come on, if you aren't working for the Council and you aren't working for B, who's pulling little Wes's strings?"

"Alas, as both the Council and Buffy chose to fire me, I had to go my own way."

Faith laughed, "So now you're what, some sort of rogue Watcher? Does that title come with plaid, or pleats?"

"I would call myself an independent party. I don't answer to anyone or owe anyone outside my own organization. With the exception of you, Faith."

"And what do you owe me?" she asked, correctly guessing he did not even claim to answer to her.

"An apology." Faith was surprised by that. "Yes, I was assigned to be your Watcher. Yes, I was set up to fail by the Council. Yes, you chose your path. However, none of that changes the fact that I accepted the assignment as your Watcher. I accepted that responsibility and swore several oaths. All of which I broke in my interaction with you and my decision to betray you to the Council. For that I am deeply sorry."

Faith stared at him for a minute, until the silence became unbearable. "What, so that's it? We're just supposed to be good now? After everything you—" His smile stopped her words. A deep, joyous thing, she would not have thought him capable of it. "What's the smile for?"

"If you were happy with who you were, then my bumbling incompetence which assisted you to that state would be a matter of supreme indifference, or even gratitude. It is only if you recognize that your position is…undesirable would you be angry at me for my part in placing you therein."

It took a minute for Faith to work that out. "You're glad that I'm pissed at you?"

"To the extent it indicates that you don't intend to leave here and go off murdering folks. Yes."

"I'm no—leave here? I can leave here?"

"If you like, certainly. I suggest waiting long enough to get your strength back though. That charm," he waved a hand at the quartz necklace hanging around her neck, "will shield you from most mystical locator spells, but the Council is looking for you. Hard. I cannot guarantee that a sufficiently determined person could not locate you and I assume you want to be at your best should that occur."

Mind finally working as she dealt with a tactical challenge rather than mere verbal sparring, her eyes narrowed and focused, turning from attempting to best him, to getting the information she needed. The news that it had been seven months since she was stabbed was…sobering. And it explained her weakness. But Slayer healing and a sufficient intake of calories would get her on her feet, she was sure of that. And then she'd get some payback on B for filleting her.

The door opened and the British Bitch came in, carrying an impressive tray of food. The woman had the good sense to keep her distance and keep her eyes on Faith the entire time she was in the room. It wouldn't have been enough to save her, if Faith had had her full power back. As it was, she simply had to accept the food with a grunt. The girl was a pretty enough redhead with a hell of a right and a scowl. The maid outfit she wore was very different from the one Faith had worn on occasion, having been designed with decorum, not sex in mind. That didn't stop Faith from giving her a smirk, nor did the fact that her head was still pounding from the blow.

"Anything else, sir?"

"No. Thank you, Jane," Wes said without ever taking his eyes off Faith.

The maid evaporated out the door. "Like that? Pretty girl calling you sir?"

Wes cocked his head at her quizzically. "What I would like is for you to be my Slayer again." His voice was earnest as he rose. "But I think the more relevant question is what do you want? Or perhaps even, who do you want to be, Faith?"

She stared at him, shocked at the lack of smugness and prissy certainty that he knew what was best. A sad smile tugged at his lips without reaching his eyes. "For now, I think some food might help." He nodded towards the bag. "I salvaged what I could of your stuff, most of it was ruined, however. Still," he lifted it and passed it to her, "it's yours."

Faith took it, embarrassed by how her arms shook holding up the heavy black leather bag. It was a good bag and promisingly heavy. But she knew better than to paw through the bag in front of him. If he knew what she wanted, what was important to her, then he'd have one more handle on her. The Watcher already had far too many of those given her current weakened state. Her eyes noted the black gloves on his long fingered hands, covering them completely.

"I'll be back after you eat. If you need me, just hit the call button," he waved at the medical apparatus sitting beside her bed.

Faith nodded, then moved like a striking snake, catching the waving hand. His other came up, not towards her, but in a signal unseen to her, but which prevented the guards outside from rushing in. A shaking hand caught the edge of his glove and peeled it off unresisting fingers.

Her hands dropped from his wrist and flicked the glove away as she saw what lay underneath. Bad burns were nothing new to Faith, she'd seen them on Humans occasionally, but a great many times on Vampires. This was something else though, because those hands still worked. She'd seen them. That was despite the fact that they were blackened and cracked like he'd shoved them right into a fire, but still moved with an easy dexterousness.

"What the hell, Wes?" she asked with feeling. "If you are even Wes, which I doubt!"

"Alas, I am indeed Wesley Wyndam-Pryce," he turned away and gathered up the glove with the same British prissiness she remembered. "These are rather a complicated story—"

"I ain't exactly a rocket scientist, but I think you better spill."

"Very well. But you haven't eaten anything in seven months. This can wait until you've eaten," he headed for the door.

"If you think I'm eating a bite in this house until I know what's going on, you're crazier than Ethan Rayne and his dream of a teenage mutant ninja adults."

"How did you hear about that? I didn't think you were around for that." Wes asked, turning to face her.

"Same way you did, listening to the gang talk about how wacky Sunnydale is."

"I actually read about it in Giles's Watcher Diaries. That man cannot use one syllable when four are feasible."

Faith glared at him. He flushed slightly. "I'm sure I was not nearly as bad as he is. He's got decades of practice being prissily pedantic! I was barely out of training."

Faith just stared at him.

A few minutes of pleasant bullshitting about the wonderful fun it had been being on the outside of the group in Sunnydale ended when Faith finally got irritated enough to repeat her question.

"Very well. Told in as few syllables as possible. You poisoned Angel, remember?" Faith nodded, without shame, but also without much pride. "Fought Buffy, so she could feed you to him as an antidote. That, by the way, is an unsubtle way to attempt suicide. Honestly, I can name three more effective poisons for which Slayer blood is _not_ an antidote—"

"I thought this was in as few words as possible?" Faith asked, bemused by the way his mind jumped the rails and trying very hard not to react to his view that she had been attempting suicide by Slayer.

"Fair point. Anyway, whoops, I left out the part where Buffy asked the Council for help. They said no, I passed on the message and she fires the Council and me. Then you fight. You lose. But Buffy loses your body, so she feeds Angel herself. I decide in a fit of idiocy and bravado to stick around. I tell the Council. They fire me. The day comes. The Mayor ascends, an eclipse begins and his vampire minions come out to fight. But it's a trap. Everyone's armed and we fight. The Mayor runs into a big bomb, but by then I've take a fun blow to the head and gone down as one of the first casualties. The bomb goes off, the eclipse breaks and the vampires run off. They drag me and a few others with them. They take out their disappointment on me and the others. I get desperate enough to try certain nasty and forbidden magics. Those interact messily with the power the Ascension left behind and poof, magic fire-hands. On the other hand," he grinned, "so to speak, they work a treat on vampires. I just have to be sure not to catch my clothes on fire. Good enough?"

Faith blinked and considered what 'take out their disappointment' was likely to mean coming from a vamp. She'd seen what Kakistos had done to her Watcher. Still had nightmares about it sometimes. "Ooookay."

"Good. Now, are you willing to eat, or do you need another story?" Wesley asked, a hint of fire in him after all.

"Oh, oh," she clapped her hands with false enthusiasm, "more stories, daddy, please!"

"Okay," he leaned back in his chair. "Once upon a time, there was a Hellmouth. And, Humans being Humans, they decided to build a city on it. Then a bunch of stuff happened and it ended up with no centralized power structure and a number of factions scattered about the place, fighting for power, faith, cash, or just to be left alone. There's most everything here, werewolves, all manner of demons, some of the nastier varieties of human, but relatively few vampires. Though some parts of the city are relatively stable, in other parts the human inhabitants either keep their heads down, or wage guerrilla warfare against everything which goes bump in the night. And into that mess comes a Watcher—"

"Wait! You're trying to give me a history lesson disguised as a story! Uh-uh. No school, out you go," Faith commanded, then leered at his groin as he rose, "unless you'd like to stay and help me get dressed."

"I think you can probably manage," he said, leaving without either a blush or a leer, much to Faith's disappointment. It wasn't even that she was horny, _though after seven months, I'll probably be crawling the walls, once I could crawl_. But it was power and influence and other good things and most importantly, it meant he was predictable. If he was just like everyone else, than she could handle him. If he was different…he wasn't different. Only the Mayor had been different and he was dead. It had to be Buffy's fault. She was sure of that, even if Wesley had tried to avoid saying it. That needed answering. Especially since Buffy hadn't lost anyone. She'd gotten to keep her little vampire boy-toy, and how she could cuddle up to that blood soaked hottie, but criticize Faith was—she didn't care what Buffy thought. It didn't matter. Really.

Her hand closed around the fork that had been provided. The food they served was mushy, maybe in deference to her IV diet of the last seven months, or maybe because they didn't trust her with a knife, but either way they didn't understand a Slayer at all if they thought she couldn't take them with a fork. Once she got her strength back, which meant eating.

A forkful of unappetizing mush rose to her lips, then she was gobbling down a shockingly tasty meal. She'd be strong again soon, then everything would work itself out. Or she'd kill everyone. Either way would work for her.

 ** _Author's Note: Okay, a couple of brief points, anything that a character says is based on what they know, which is not necessarily the truth. Wesley believes that the Council intended to assassinate Faith because after escaping, he went looking for her and spotted the Watcher the Council had assigned to Faith. Naturally assuming they intended assassination, he interfered._**

 ** _From canon we know they did not intend assassination. So the question becomes what was intended? Why was Faith left in place for eight months? Why not kill her? There's not a good canon explanation for this (that I'm aware of). So, in thinking about it and the dreams we see Faith having before she wakes up, for the purpose of this story, I conclude that the Council was making use of the novelty of having two Slayers in existence by experimenting on Faith, attempting to induce those Slayer abilities she never shows any signs of, like prophetic dreams._**

 ** _That idea raises a different question, why not move her to a secure facility of some sort. My answer there is internal politics as any such move might alert factions other than those involved in such experimentation. We don't see much of the internal politics of the Watcher's Council, but it's got to have them. I'll delve more into that side of things as the story progresses._**

 ** _Incidentally, this theory also explains why Faith wakes up a bit earlier and a bit saner here than in canon, as she's being well cared for and not experimented on. To be fair, she's also just being given answers instead of having to go looking herself._**

 ** _Comments/reviews are always welcome._**

 ** _Next Chapter: EVEN MORE TALKING_**


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: For whatever reason, the section breaks in the original file didn't come through here. That should be fixed now. Sorry for the confusion.**

Harmony hated waking up alone, almost as much as she hated sleeping alone. The room was full of Wesley's scent, but that wasn't the same as his warm presence. A deep breath and she knew she could track him. It was weird, like not needing to breathe, or eat. Though, she grinned to herself, she still liked to eat and could eat anything she wanted without gaining a pound, or worrying about anything silly like allergies. That was nice. Still, she had to put in quite a bit of work to maintain her hotness. Though, she hadn't had a zit since she was turned. Totally worth it. Harmony she took a quick shower, turning up the heat until steam filled the room, but she kept her hair protected from the heat. She took a long shower, as her fingers no longer wrinkled from the water and the water heater for the mansion was designed for two hundred soldiers, not the staff of thirty or so they currently had. When she was finally done, she slid out of the shower and made herself up with a practiced hand to add a bit of color to otherwise pale cheeks

Though she considered many of the more elaborate outfits in her closet, she pulled on a simple robe and belted it around her waist. She'd noticed Wesley had a taste for the simple and, her grin broadened, when you looked as good as she did, you could make anything look good. Besides, simple was usually simple to remove. Quick steps took her in pursuit of Wesley.

She caught up with him sitting in the dining room, an elaborate plate of breakfast in front of him. There was a platter of blood pudding sitting next to him, waiting for her. His ongoing attempt to feed her blood pudding was either an ongoing joke, or a serious attempt to get her to try the disgusting dish, Harmony hadn't been able to figure out which. It had begun when she'd tried out the pet name 'pudding.' Laughter had not been the response she was looking for and his offer to show her what real pudding was like had met with hesitant agreement, followed by disgust when he offered her bloody sausages. Ever since, the British delicacy had turned up at their meals, only to go uneaten by them, a treat for the staff. And, on the rare occasions when he was feeling silly, he would refer to her as his 'blood pudding,' with a truly bizarre relish.

She ignored it and took the seat on the other side of him and snatched a piece of bacon off his plate, munching it down. "Mmmm…bacon…" she groaned in ecstasy, very deliberately trying to distract him.

He just smirked at her, "Have a good nap?"

"Until I woke up," she ran a bare leg against his, "alone."

"Sorry about that," Wes took a large bite of the porridge he always ate when he was tense, bland but filling. Once she'd joked about food being made just like mom used to make it. Ten seconds of pained reaction to the joke had told her more about his home life than seven months together. Though the fact that being a Watcher was a family business and he'd been fired was a hint.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she could hear his heart speed up. She hadn't even done anything particularly fun yet. So why was his heart speeding up? And he didn't care about how she slept. Well, that wasn't fair. He cared, he just wasn't likely to ask about it, preferring to discuss their plans, or responsibilities. Small talk only occurred when he was feeling guilty about something, her eyes narrowed further, or trying to distract her. "And where were you?"

"Faith woke up," he said bluntly.

Harmony winced away from him. "Ah, the other woman in your life needed you."

Wes cocked his head, "Harmony!"

She forced a grin. "Just kidding."

"Are you?"

"Mostly."

A silent stare was his only response to that.

"Partly."

"Okay. I am sorry, I should have told you, I just hate waking you up."

"I hate that too," she admitted.

"Forgive me?"

"Of course," she took the mug of hot blood one of the maids had been carrying towards her and rose. "I'll just go get dressed and _we_ can talk to her."

"Harmony, I don't think—"

"If you think you're meeting with a psycho Slayer alone, you're crazier than crazy elf we met in Vegas."

"He wasn't that crazy," Wes countered.

"He shrank himself so he could ride a housecat!"

"Like you wouldn't do that if you could," he teased. "I seem to recall someone wanting to ride the tigers when we went to the zoo."

Harmony laughed and they spent the rest of the meal trading scandalous stories about their pursuit of the elf through the Vegas strip. It wasn't until he put down the tea he'd just finished that Harmony realized she'd been distracted from her original point and chugged the remaining blood in her mug to catch up.

"I'll need to get dressed before we can meet with Faith. I definitely want to look my best before that."

"Weren't you going to head down to Riverside? I thought you were meeting with our old supplier and then taking a shopping trip along—"

"I'm not leaving you alone with that psycho," Harmony snapped.

"It's been weeks since you went shopping you know—"

"No," she cut him off, then waited to see how he would respond. It hadn't taken long to discover that Wesley could talk her into almost anything. What made him different from every other boyfriend she'd ever had was that he actually did have her best interests in mind. Still, sometimes they disagreed about what those were. When the disagreement was severe and she was completely unwilling to be talked out of her position, she simply refused to hear further argument on a point. It was rare, but Wes had yet to push after she'd taken a final position. If he did, she wasn't sure what she would do. All too often she felt that their relationship was unbalanced, that she took more than she gave, or was dragging him down. If he really pushed, she wasn't sure she'd be able to stand up to him, even on this.

After an incredibly long and awkward moment, he nodded and agreed to wait for her to return.

Harmony was all smiles and joy as she skipped upstairs to find a new outfit. Something she could move in and still show up Faith, who she remembered as hot and slutty. On the other hand, she had been in a coma for seven months. Hands flicked through outfits as she grinned, seven good months, best in her life, even with the battles and being a vampire and everything. She mattered to someone and that someone mattered to her. Life was good, she concluded as she pulled on the tight red top and tighter gold pants, and she wasn't going to let some Slayer hussy ruin it.

 **XXXXX**

Jane Cavendish stood before the viewer and watched the Slayer dress. Not out of any prurient desire to see the scarecrow naked, having done a hundred some shifts as her caretaker, Faith had no secrets from her any longer. But both of the guards on duty were men and while her cousins were generally all right, they weren't smart enough for her to trust that they wouldn't say something stupid to Faith when the Slayer was recovered. And if there was one thing she'd learned from her training with Harmony, it was that normal humans did _not_ want to piss off those with superhuman strength and speed.

Harmony had very much not been what she was expecting. When Lady Wyndam-Pryce requested volunteers to set up her son's new house in America, Jane had volunteered in order to escape her beloved, smothering family without being cast out. Cavendishes had served the Wyndams and then the Wyndam-Pryces since some ancient ancestor of the noble family had rescued the Cavendish clan during the Crusades, or the Hundred Years War, or the War of the Roses, or some other bullshit war centuries ago.

Jane had wanted more from life than service and she had certainly found it. Upon meeting Harmony, she'd known exactly what she was and how to handle her. The same way good servants had been handling strumpets for the last century, icy politeness and/or cutting cruelty, depending upon how taken with her the young lord in question had become. But before she could do much more than greet the girl, the young lord had had a quiet word with Father who'd had not-quiet words with her and the rest of the women-servants who'd have been responsible for handling Harmony, making it very clear that that would not be tolerated.

Before Jane or the others could begin to complain, the young lord had dropped them headfirst into absurd training, running his own boot-camp on demons, vampires and everything else that went bump in the night (a tiny, inappropriate grin twitched on her thin lips at that thought, as Harmony definitely went bump in the night, she was not a quiet woman).

Of course the Cavendishes knew that such things existed, they'd served Watchers for years, but handling that was the job of the Wyndam-Pryces, not the Cavendishes. The young lord did not agree and insisted they be trained in everything from combat medicine to basic demolitions. The four months they'd been in the States wasn't enough time for them to gain true mastery of those skills, but Jane had to admit, she'd learned a lot. Especially from Harmony. For a tiny blonde harlot, she could fight.

The fact that she was a vampire had given Jane and the others pause, but if the young lord said she was safe, then she was safe.

He'd said no such thing about the woman in the infirmary-cum-jail. So Jane would keep both eyes on her and her hands full of weapons, because she wasn't giving up her new life for anything.

Properly dressed now (if that term could be applied to a tank-top, leather pants that were clearly too large on her now, and a short leather jacket), Faith was examining the knife that the young lord usually wore at his belt. A quick flick pulled it from its sheath and slid it through a complicated pattern almost too fast for Jane's eye to catch, then froze in a low thrust that would have caught her enemy in the gut, about the place Faith had had a scar when Jane had started treating her. Though the scar had vanished over the last month, Jane had a good memory.

The knife snapped back into its sheath and Faith took a deep, defiant breath and slid the sheath onto her belt, where the hilt would be plainly visible, despite her jacket. The murderer's dark eyes slipped to glance at the drawer holding the tape the young lord had given her (the first thing she'd done when he'd left had been to hide the thing, as best she could in a room designed to be short on hiding places). Then she resolutely looked away, straightened her shoulders and pushed the button to request company.

 **XXXXX**

Wesley was tempted to suggest they retire back to the master bedroom when he saw Harmony come downstairs, but the newly installed (over Cavendish's stated belief that it was unnecessary as he could simply deliver any necessary messages) intercom informed him that Faith had pushed the button requesting his presence.

Usually Harmony would have entered first with Wes watching her back (more or less literally depending on the expected danger), but in this case it was probably best that Wes enter first, or so he believed and after some debate, managed to convince Harmony he was correct. Jane did not assist him in that by announcing that Faith was now armed. The fact that Wes had armed her managed to elude Harmony for the moment.

A glance at the screen showed Faith sitting at the desk in front of a mirror, applying make-up and waiting for him to enter, clearly deliberately shooting for nonchalant, as she was waiting with half her make-up applied. Wes grinned and knocked on the door. Permission to enter came fast, and when he pushed the door open his face was neutral and blank.

"You know, either a lot more of my stuff survived than I'd expect, or you pay a creepy amount of attention to my make-up," Faith said to the mirror.

"Actually, it didn't occur to me to collect your make-up the first time I made it into your apartment and by the time it did occur to me, the place had been cleared out. Fortunately Harmony was able to identify which ones you wore. That was quite impressive given the sheer number of—"

Faith looked up, face flashing somewhere between fear and fury, the knife flicked out and through the air over Wes's shoulder towards Harmony's face. The movement was too fast for him to intercept, fortunately he didn't have to, as Harmony caught the blade easily, as diligent training and practice, brought about by Wesley's nagging had given her some skill to go with her newly unnatural strengths.

Faith surged out of the chair, shouting "Vampire!" grabbing Wes's shoulder and pulling him behind her even as the Watcher tried to ask what was going on. A powerful overhead blow suggested that the meal had spurred Faith's Slayer healing into overdrive. It took both of Harmony's arms to block the blow and it still brought her to her knees.

For an instant Wes considered using his weapons, but Faith was, instinctively, attempting to protect him. There would be only moments before the door opened and this situation escalated, perhaps beyond retrieval. There was the question of how Faith had known Harmony was a vampire, she'd never shown any signs of such abilities in the past, but that was a question for later.

In the instant before Faith's other arm launched a strike towards Harmony's exposed throat and Harmony twisted to use the knife she'd caught to slice open the arm that had launched the overhead strike, Wesley moved, catching Faith's arm as it slid back and yanked hard. The off balance Slayer, treacherously pulled from behind fell backwards atop him. Reacting instantly, she elbowed him in the ribs, using it to fall free from him and continued the roll, automatically adjusting so she came back to her feet with her back to the too-close wall, rather than plowing into it.

Before they could do anything, or the door could open, Wesley snapped, "Everybody stop!"

Faith stared down at him, shocked betrayal in her eyes for the second time. Harmony was sidling forward, trying to get between Faith and him, but the room just wasn't that broad, with him in the way, she'd have to hurdle him, an option he removed by rising. "She's a fucking vampire!" Faith swore.

"I'm aware of that. I'm rather more curious about how you're aware of that."

"She's got fucking glowing gold eyes and the whole crinkly vampire forehead thing and FANGS! It's fucking obvious. Have you gone fucking blind?"

Wes glanced back at Harmony who most definitely did not have her game face on. "No. But she hasn't shift—" his eyes flicked to the make-up now scattered over the table, then to Faith's face. His voice took on that note of irritation which was unique to their interaction and always made Harmony feel simultaneously pleasantly warm and unpleasantly small. "Harmony?"

"Yes, Wes?" Harmony asked in the chipper tone of someone who senses they've made a horrible mistake, but isn't yet aware of what it is and hopes that maybe, just maybe they're wrong and it's all someone else's fault.

"You remember how I said we should get two units of eye-shadow and put one in her bag and one in the apothecary cabinet?"

"Yes, Wes."

"You wouldn't happen to have used one of them, would you?"

"I wanted to see if it would work with my coloring. It really didn't, I looked all sallow, like—"

"A vampire?" Faith suggested, confused by this sudden digression into make-up.

"Hey! I resent that!"

"And then you wouldn't have moved the container from the _apothecary_ cabinet into her bag?"

"Well, yes," Harmony admitted, momentarily diverted from the argument, confusion coloring her voice, then shifting to triumph as she remembered the rest of that story. "But I went out and got another one and put it back in the cabinet."

There was a moment of silence and a deep breath from Wesley, then he continued in a completely level tone. "Okay. So here's what happened. I mixed certain things into that eyeshadow to let you see Vampires and other hidden things. I intended to give it to you if you chose to stay and were comfortable using mystical items I…procure or make. I apologize for the confusion."

"So you don't trust me," Faith stepped closer to him, bitter words flowing like poison from her lips. "I knew it. You think I need some sort of magic bullshit to do my fucking job!"

Wes stared at her for a moment, then gave a slow smile. "Thank you."

"What? What the fuck for?"

"The direction of your anger presupposes one of two scenarios. First, this is something no one else thought of, and I came up with it on my own for when you woke up. In that case, you think I am a genius. Thank you. Second, this tool, which would have prevented your accidental killing of Mr. Finch, existed but I made a reasoned decision not to give it to you, because I had confidence in your abilities, or something similar. In that case, I would, at least arguably, have been a good Watcher to you. Alas neither of these are true. Would you like to know why you should really be mad at me?"

"Wes—" Harmony said, a hand signal cut her off, much to her irritation. She'd make him pay for that, if they survived.

"Sure," Faith flexed. "Tell me why I should be mad."

"Because it always existed, but I didn't give it to you. Not for any good reason, though politics played its part, but at a much more basic level, I didn't give it to you because no other Watcher had given it to you. That's the same reason why an organization with a billion pound budget didn't pay you. The same reason why an organization of thousands gives you a support staff of one and no combat support. It's not like they don't have them. But for a Traditional Watcher, as I always aspired to be, the fact that it is how it has always been is supposed to be reason enough. Which is also why I turned you in to the Council, instead of figuring out the situation. Because it was the way things were done. I might have been able to hide behind the fact that it was what I was raised to be, but that doesn't hold up. Buffy killed Gwendolyn Post and was not turned in to the Council by Giles. And Giles was raised to be even more of a Traditional Watcher than I. No, my failings are my own. Failure of imagination, in seeing only a replaceable weapon, not a person; and failure of nerve, in being unwilling to try anything new for fear of breaking tradition. That is why you should be mad at me and for that, I can only apologize."

Faith's hands were clenched so tight that only Slayer bone density kept her fingers from breaking under the pressure. Red actually filled her vision. Finally, someone else was to blame. No, finally someone else _admitted_ they were to blame. It had always been their fault. Buffy and Giles and…Wesley. That thought stopped her. She'd blamed a lot of people for her actions, but not really Wesley. He'd been such a little mouse of a man. Blaming her descent on him was…embarrassing. Being driven to evil by Wesley was like being driven to evil because a waitress had brought you Diet Coke instead of regular Coke. The red faded as she considered what he was apologizing for. Failing to save her.

She was Faith Lehane. She was the Slayer. She was powerful. She did the saving. She snorted loudly at those thoughts. If they were true and they _were_ , damn it! If they were true, then no one was to blame but her. She'd killed those people. She'd poisoned Angel. She'd…laugh. It was all so funny. The stares, the looks, the whispers. _They'd been right_. _She was the crazy one._

She laughed until she was crying and gasping, leaning heavily on the wall behind her, neatly applied make-up reduced to wreckage on her face, a glance showed her Harmony as the pretty, _sane_ , young woman she'd remembered, not the gold-eyed monster. Though there was a hard edged tension about her and she stood like a trained fighter, ready to move. Wesley just stood there, caught flatfooted by her reaction, brow crinkled in confusion and concern. The concern was acid on her skin, undeserved. The laughter stopped in an instant.

The world spun around Wes's skull like she had a concussion from a trip through the air, stopped by a wall, an experience she was all too familiar with. It seemed to all be drifting away for just a moment, before she landed on her one fixed point, Buffy. She didn't even realize she'd said the other Slayer's name until Wesley asked what in the world she was talking about.

"Buffy gutted me like a fish. I owe her for that," that was a point of certainty, something she could cling to. As was the fact that "no one's ever hurt me like that without me killing them."

Harmony winced at that, but Wes didn't, instead his face went bleak. "I know all about suicide, Faith."

She straightened indignantly, glad to have something to be angry about. "You think I can't take her?'

"I think if this is really about revenge, rather than suicide, then there's no rush. You can take your time, recover and prepare, can't you? You only have to run off now if victory is not the goal," Wesley snapped.

Faith didn't have an answer for that. To her unvoiced, but profound relief, Harmony spoke up, shifting attention from the too serious topic. "Seriously? We're just okay with her wanting to kill Buffy?"

Wes shrugged, "I'm okay with her wanting to kill anyone. Making the attempt is more problematic, but Buffy is not my concern. It's not like she's threatening to kill you."

"Um…" Harmony held up the knife she'd barely caught before it could catch her in the eye.

"Fair point. Are you going to try to kill Harmony again?" Wesley asked.

"She's a Vampire!"

"Do you care?" he countered in a tone of honest curiosity.

Faith cocked her head, surprised by the question. After a moment's awkward hesitation, she shrugged, "Not if she keeps her fangs to herself."

"Harmony?"

She shifted to her game face and smirked, "I wouldn't bite you if you were coated in chocolate, Slayer."

"Mmmm…kinky," Faith joked.

"Amusing. But I somehow doubt this is why you called us down here."

"I want out of this cell. Are you going to let me out, or do I need to break out?"

"That depends, are you going to attack any of my people?"

"Are they going to attack me?"

"Not first."

"And if they do?" Faith asked.

"Feel free to defend yourself. Please don't kill them and please do come tell me so I can handle it."

"Fine."

"Then fine. There's plenty of rooms."

"Good," Faith ran a hand through black, straw-like hair, "it better have a shower and some shampoo. Whoever you had taking care of me definitely didn't know how to handle my hair."

Harmony gave her a look, "You know, she's right. If you'd let me handle it, she'd have come out looking better than when she went in," her look went cutting, "I could really even you out with the right—"

Faith's eyes were narrowing and Wes jumped in before things got violent. "I need your help. Trying to secure a Hellmouth without a Slayer proved difficult."

Harmony stiffened, hurt, but unable to deny the inadvertent insult. Wes didn't see it, as she was behind him. Faith didn't see it, as her focus was on Wes.

Faith's eyes kept narrowing. "Are we still in Sunnydale then? Where's Buffy?"

"Buffy's in Sunnydale, we're in Cleveland."

"There's a Hellmouth in Cleveland?"

"Yes. Less accessible and better defended than the one in Sunnydale, fortunately. However it still attracts lots and lots of demons."

"Which is why you need me," Faith pushed off the wall, stopping in front of him

"One reason," Wes agreed.

"Honesty. That must be a new experience for you, Watcher."

Harmony flushed furiously and began to move. Unable, or unwilling to defend herself, she would still defend him. "I'm not a Watcher anymore."

Faith got up in his face, "Then you ain't my Watcher are you?"

"No, but that does not release me from my oaths. You may, if you wish. Buffy did, after all."

Harmony had possessively moved up behind him, wrapping an arm around his neck and standing on tip-toe to put her chin on his shoulder. She would also defend what they shared. "Don't think that you're the only one he's made promises too," she said, glaring daggers at Faith.

Faith's dark eyes widened as she took that in. "Holy shit. Is there something in the water in Sunnydale which makes you people confusing who you're supposed to be fighting with who you're supposed to be fucking?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not in the water. After all, we didn't get together until after we'd left Sunnydale," Wes answered, blandly, pretending the question were serious.

"Seriously? The two of you? Seriously?" Faith asked.

"Ser—" Wes began.

"What," Harmony interrupted sliding around him, planting herself squarely between the former-Watcher and quasi-Slayer, "you think he's too good for me? Too smart?"

"Yes."

Harmony twitched forward, but stopped when Wes's hand came to rest on her shoulder. "She's wrong," he said simply, ignoring Faith so completely she wondered if she'd suddenly turned invisible.

Harmony leaned back against him and his arms wrapped around her waist, dropping a kiss on her temple. After a long moment of glaring at Faith, she began to relax, melting against him.. "I'm not, you know," Faith put in, but that got boring fast, as Harmony didn't bother reacting, not while wrapped in the warm solidity of Wes's interest.

"If it makes you feel any better, you're too pretty and cool for that prissy princess," Faith added, trying to get their attention back.

"She's right, you know," Wes whispered.

Harmony squirmed around and rose onto her tip-toes, kissing him deeply. "No, she's not."

Faith gagged. Loudly and theatrically. "You two are terrible."

"Aren't we just? Harmony asked, then pushed herself further up and whispered something in Wes's ear.

"Better safe than sorry," Wes said in response.

Faith stared for a moment and the pair of them grinned at her. "Can we get out of here now?" she asked, trying not to sound like a child on a long car trip.

"Sure," they separated slightly. "Follow us," Wes said, turning away.

"Hang on a moment," Faith put in. The others paused. "Better safe than sorry?"

"Yes?" Wes asked, suddenly a little nervous, as he had no idea where she was going with this.

"You're not the sort to just assume something's going to work," Faith noted, swaggering forward, "You're practically Mr. Tests and Procedures."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Wes replied, going for irritated, but coming out closer to squeaky than he'd have liked.

Faith suddenly grinned broadly. "Not in this case. Because if sweet little Harmony didn't know about the eye-shadow, then you had to test it on someone. Who could that have been?"

Wes suddenly blushed an impressive red, something Faith had been trying to manage since she woke up.

"What's she talking about—oh—" Harmony figured it out a few moments after the others. "You didn't come to me for help putting it on? I'm hurt," Harmony pouted. The pout in her voice and on her lips was clearly false. The look she shot Faith was disturbingly conspiratorial, given that they'd been inches from combat seconds ago.

Gathering what dignity he could and ignoring his blush, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce spoke in his most put-upon voice. "Given that after we tangled with that Trickster, you went in search of a camera, rather than cutting me loose, no I chose not to involve you to assist me in putting on Faith's eye shadow."

Harmony and Faith glanced at each other and gave twin, worrisome, grins. At some point, they might well need to kill one another, but at this moment, they had a single target and a single mind as to how to go about hitting that target. "No one would believe us without evidence," Faith noted.

"There are two of us," Harmony countered.

"Would you believe just our word on something this important?"

Harmony shook her head. "You're right. We definitely need evidence."

Faith's hand appeared, holding the eye shadow.

"I've got the eye shadow."

"There's a camera in our rooms," Harmony replied.

"Wait, what's this now?" Wes asked, startled, as his prep school instincts belatedly kicked in and sent him scooting towards the exit. Too late, as it turned out, as iron hands and grinning faces descended upon him.

 ** _Author's Note: Okay, that got a bit silly, but, I mean, think about it…He'd have to test it. And they'd want to see that, and while you have to deal with your blood enemies eventually, opportunities to see Wesley Wyndam-Pryce in that light come along so rarely you have to snatch them up before they get away._**

 ** _Sometimes the characters take you odd places._**

 ** _On Gwendolyn Post, I couldn't work it in, but Faith had a conversation with Wes later, arguing that Buffy certainly hadn't killed the renegade Watcher, as backlash from her own stolen mystical weapon had done it. Wes took the position that cutting off her hand would have led to her death regardless of the backlash, especially given that no one present had any real first aid skills, except, maybe, Angel. However he segued that into yet another set of self-blaming complaints about the Council failing to provide crucial training and the topic mostly got dropped._**

 ** _Next Chapter: OH THANK GOD, SOME ACTION._**

 ** _As always, comments/critiques are always welcome._**


	4. Chapter 4

Faith ducked under the powerful blow, kicked the demon in the gut and buried her knife up to its hilt in the Skilosh demon's third eye, the one in the back of his skull, when the force of her blow forced the demon to bow to her. The knife bit through bone and flesh easily, a twist cracked the demon's skull open and she ripped it free with a smooth yank. Collapsing bonelessly to the floor, grey brain and yellow blood leaked from the hole, coloring the grey skin and red stripes of the demon in a disturbing manner.

The second demon screamed at the death of its compatriot and rushed her, tongue flicked out like a throwing knife, only to be dodged as easily. A hand snaked out, catching the tongue and yanking the demon forward onto the blade as it sliced through his gut. Faith bellowed as she stabbed the demon a dozen more times, hands a blur as she perforated the demon's guts. A scream burst from his lips, past his still-imprisoned tongue and finally Faith pulled back, blade rising in a sharp arc to cut through the muscular appendage right next to his lips.

Choking on its own blood, the demon swayed there, staring at nothing, agony blinding it to the first stroke at its throat. The next two it saw coming, but couldn't muster the energy to dodge as Faith took its head off. A neat trick with just her dagger.

Its yellow blood was far too thick to fountain out the way most creatures would have, but the pressure of its still-pumping heart was enough to cause it to spill over and down onto the creature's shirt, at least until its heart finally realized that his head had come off.

In all honesty, that probably wasn't necessary, though Wes had been a little unclear on exactly how much damage these beasties could take, but the ones they'd run into outside had gone down under the automatic weapons fire of the SWAT team he'd rustled up to back her up. It had been Faith's position that she didn't need the help, but since Wes wasn't sure how many of the Skilosh demons had broken off from the main group, he'd insisted. Especially since she was unwilling, or unable, to learn the ritual necessary to undo the demon's nasty habit of impregnating humans with their spawn.

Faith had argued with that, until she realized that they had dicks on their tongues and liked to fuck people's skulls, literally! After that, she was sufficiently grossed out by their existence that she was willing to take all the assistance available, if only so she wouldn't have to deal with the poor bastards the Skilosh had kidnapped to form this nest.

The SWAT team had secured the handful of streets in the tiny town the retreating demons had overrun. Any demon which stuck its head outside would get picked off by a sniper, or automatic weapons fire, but sending the humans, even heavily armed humans into close quarters with the demons was probably a bad idea.

Which made the fact that the three humans in town with the knowledge, and the gear, to fix the demon incubators the Skilosh had dragged into the church, had followed her into the church, pretty stupid. At least in Faith's not at all humble opinion. But with the British Bitch in the lead, they hadn't taken no for an answer. At least the British Bitch had a hell of a right, not that she'd have any chance if Faith hadn't been right out of a coma, still it showed spunk. More spunk than any of the Brits she knew had shown. Except her own Watcher.

Faith shook of that thought and gave an irritated look at the shotguns the Brits cradled like favored children. Given those, her usual solution to idiocy was probably gonna be more trouble than it was worth. One was large and was therefore mentally dubbed the Big Brit and the other one's head was clean shaven and dubbed the Bald Brit.

Ignoring the stupidity and the stupid, Faith pressed on, deeper into the church, breaking into the main hall. There she also ignoring the curled, chained, helpless figures lining the floor and the walls. She was not like them. She was strong once again and the demons would know fear.

The three in the front of the church, standing by the baptismal font, did not show fear, even as she flourished her blade, sending a thick, viscous line of yellow blood across the row of seats between them. They, being as stupid as the Brits, chose to rush her. Faith moved to kick a seat towards one of them, which would buy her time to take down one of the other two, but a trio of shotgun blasts, incredibly loud in the close confines of the church, sent one of the demons to the ground, blasted to hamburger as her human escorts accidentally all shot the same one and damn near deafened her.

Usually her heightened senses were an asset, but not when three shotguns went off less than ten feet away. Her hands wrapped around her head, shielding her ears, far too late. The Skilosh demons came on, ignoring the deafening racket, or perhaps they were simply desperate to close before the others could fire again.

Faith managed the kick she'd planned, but instead of flinging the chair into the charging demon's face, the flimsy chair just shattered, sending fragments of whatever weak-ass wood it was made of at the charging demon which didn't do a damn thing but put her off balance as one of the demons barreled into her.

With an effort she forced herself not resist, but roll with the impact, spinning them over further than the demon had intended, ending up on top. A quick jerk snapped the demon's neck. As she rose, instinct drove her head to jerk out of the way as the second demon's tongue snapped towards the back of head. Faith caught the disgusting appendage as it flew over her shoulder and tried to cut through it, only to realize she'd dropped her blade, thankfully before covering her ears, and that the jabbing pain she'd ignored in her roll had been the abandoned blade carving a neat slice into her side as she rolled straight over it.

The demon whose tongue she held managed to pound a blow against her back, driving her forward, but since her grip never faltered, that only succeeded in causing her to rip his tongue further out of his head, yanking that head and attached body forward as well. Faith planted a back kick into the demon's gut and yanked forward, ripping the tongue out of his skull with a disgusting squelching sound. The Skilosh fell back clutching its throat and choking on blood. A shudder ran through Faith at the spongy, disintegrating, texture of the appendage in her hand. She tossed it aside and scooped up her knife in a single fluid motion, approaching the keening demon eagerly. Only the fact that the demon with the broken neck chose to grab her leg and trip her prevented her from finishing off the weeping beast.

A snap kick knocked the clinging demon's head back with what was very clearly the snap of bone, but did not result in the demon releasing its grip. Another trio of shotgun blasts above her blasted the broken, bleeding, choking mess that had once been a fearsome demon, into hamburger. The others had been waiting for her to clear the line of fire, which the demon had kindly helped with.

A second kick bought her the time to sit up and bring her knife down in one of the pair of eyes that decorated the front of the demon's skull. That did cause the clawed hand to spasm and release her. On the theory that a broken neck hadn't stopped the beast, so more violence was needed (and certainly not because she was just pissed off about being tripped), Faith twisted her blade against the bone of the demon's skull.

The dagger had been a gift from the Mayor and though Faith didn't think it was magical in any way, she had to admit that it remained sharp and unchipped despite rather rough use. In this case, the thick steel of the blade easily survived the twisting force brought to bear by an angry Slayer. The Skilosh's skull and brains did not.

Faith vaulted easily to her feet. "Deal with them," she waved a hand at the former prisoners, current incubators. "I'll secure the rest of the building."

The British Bitch objected and attempted to follow her on the grounds that she would need someone to watch her back. As this was a patently ridiculous position to take about the Slayer, Faith didn't bother to respond beyond snorting loudly and heading out to search the remainder of the building. Unsurprisingly, there were no demons remaining in the church, though there was a fresh body in the streets, a neat shot drilled through its skull. Apparently it had attempted to flee from the sounds of battle (or at least of shotguns) only to be taken down by one of the pair of SWAT snipers on overwatch.

Faith grinned and waved a hand out the window, then stepped out, briefly conscious of her rather bloodstained appearance, then shrugged to herself as she moved on to the next building to clear it. One or another of the hot boys on the SWAT team would say yes, she was sure of that. Then she took a deep sniff and realized exactly how bad the demon blood smelled. She was mostly sure of that.

On the other hand, maybe she'd take a shower first, this place hadn't been taken over long enough for the water to get turned off. She went through the houses and handful of shops like a buzzsaw. Four demons flushed out into SWAT's firing lines, three more taken down one on one, with a few more demonic incubators located. Despite her irritation at the British Bitch, she did indeed mark each of those doors with chalk so they knew where to go next.

It was efficient and even a little pleasant to work with a team. It was nice having someone watching your back, at least conceptually. But she had to admit, that sorta fight didn't get her engine revving quite the way one-on-one, or one-on-three fights usually did. It was less combat, more pest control. And Faith was a Slayer, not an exterminator. If SWAT could do her job, then what was she?

Grumpy ruminations burned away when she reached the next house too late. A little house, with a neatly trimmed yard, everything put away neat and tidy, a handful of military medals framed, a single picture of a happy couple in an old style military uniform and an even older style of dress. The whole place reminded her of her grandfather's little apartment from back before he died, or the Mayor's house…back before he died…

And so Faith was in a bad mood when she found the inevitable little old man bound and helpless in the closet. She was in an even worse mood when the Skilosh demon's spawn ripped its way out of the man's body and leapt for her throat. It came out full sized and looked like all the rest, except for the fact that its grey skin was streaked with the blood and viscera of its host.

Faith reacted to that characteristically. It was then that she learned that, despite what Wesley had said, she could, in fact, kill a Skilosh demon with her bare hands. All it took was sufficient fury to knock the creature down, get on top of it and pound its head flat as a pancake. Her hands were bleeding and raw by the time she was done, but the demon was almost as thoroughly dead as the old man.

With that visceral reminder of the Skilosh's rapid reproductive cycle and the fact that they came out hungry, facts which Wesley had, in fact, imparted in his pre-mission briefing, but which Faith had not bothered to recall until seeing them firsthand, Faith took off like an arrow from her favorite, sadly lost, bow.

Fortunately the SWAT team on overwatch did not shoot her, though it was a close run thing when she came bursting out of the house. There was a crackle of curses from the radio she'd been issued but hadn't bothered to learn how to use. Ignoring that she raced back to the church faster than any Human could. It was about half a mile away and she was there in less than a minute, breathing deep but even. Faith didn't slow as she burst through the church doors and sped towards the main hall.

A shotgun swung towards her automatically, in the hands of one of the Big Brit, the one who had a surprising amount of grace for a big man, who had, her eyes noticed instinctively, enough muscle that she might have considered using him to burn off steam if it weren't for the fact that he was a Brit and they always had big ol' sticks up their ass, which limited their flexibility. Other instincts controlled her reaction, which was to kick the gun away before it could come to bear. It slid out of his hands, discharging into the floor as the force of the blow ripped it from his hands.

There was an awkward silence then and an even more awkward conversation in which she explained that one of the Skilosh spawn had popped out of one of the victims. She certainly hadn't come back to warn them, or protect them, or anything. And certainly she hadn't come back to ensure that the other victims survived. No, no, no, she was there to…to…because she'd been running out of demons to fight and if the spawn were coming out, then lots would come out here and she'd have the opportunity for a real fight.

And that was similarly why she escorted them through the other buildings. Three other spawn burst forth before the Brits could finish treating all of the Skilosh prisoners and she stumbled over a few other Skilosh who died quickly, without permitting the others to use their shotguns. Fortunately, they had sufficient discipline not to fire with her in the way, even with a demon rushing them.

With the town secure, the Brits work wasn't over, they still had to do clean-up of the bodies and the injured and they would not stop blithering about how to keep the demon's presence secret. Blah, blah, water contamination, blah, blah, gang with delusions of culthood, blah, blah, Satanists. Faith had no interest in their cover story ideas, or carrying corpses so, after being bullied into letting the Bald Brit patch up the little cut on her back, she went in search of a shower.

The Bald Brit tried to argue that she shouldn't do that, as it would wreck his work, but when faced with the suggestion that he join her and make sure she didn't, he blushed a brilliant red and accepted her second suggestion that he patch her up again afterwards. Faith obviously did not intend to bother wasting time with that. It would scar a little, but with Slayer healing she'd be fine.

A quick shower later, Faith was pulling her pants back on, frowning all the while. The usually tight garments had grown loose given the amount of weight she'd lost while comatose. Indeed, her usually lush figure had shrunk to something more skeletal. Still, she'd caught a couple of the SWAT boys looking and was sure that the Brits had been looking too, they were just better at hiding it.

Fully dressed, she went in search of the cutest of the cops. A big man, with enough muscle and grace to keep up with her for a while. She frowned slightly at that thought, maybe Buffy had had the right idea, a Vamp might have been able to keep up longer. They didn't have the strength, or stamina of a Slayer, but they came a lot closer than a Human. Of course only a Slayer could really keep up with another Slayer. Faith shrugged that thought off, then snorted, wondering for a moment how well Wes could keep up with his Vampire cheerleader.

A shudder crawled over her flesh as she realized she'd just been thinking about Wesley Wyndam-Pryce having a sex life. Faith spotted the cop she was looking for, gathered with a group that were piling up the demon bodies. That didn't matter, she'd done her job and now she wanted to play. A few words in the cop's ear and a glare at his superior and they were on their way.

A very pleasant twenty minutes later, Faith was ready to be out of this hick town and definitely ready to be away from the cop who'd wanted to cuddle after and clucked over her cuts and bruises like a mother hen. Faith had no patience with such things and was gone before he managed to get his pants back on.

Unfortunately, the Brits were her ride and they had a bunch more work to do. The Bitch tried to convince her that she should help them carry bodies, but Faith was real clear that she was the muscle, not the maid.

It took three hours for the team to finish their work, while Faith camped out in one of the houses with a relatively nice television and popcorn (she did wash a few things first as even her disdain for prissy cleanliness was overcome by viscous yellow blood stains). It took her a while to arrange herself so there was no pressure placed on the cut on her back, but once in place she didn't want to move, at least until she reached the point where it had been long enough that she was considering going to find the cop for a second round.

Unfortunately, the Brits intercepted her as soon as she stepped out and insisted they all head out. Faith would have argued, but apparently the cops had gathered all the survivors and left, dragging them off to the hospital, leaving her behind with the Brits and a truck full of demon corpses.

The trip back to Wes's absurd mansion passed in a blur as Faith let her mind drift the way it always did on car trips, the flashing scenery acting as an almost hypnotic relaxant. She didn't even know the her hands were flicking her knife through complicated, dangerous looking patterns until the Big Brit started whining about it. That jolted her out long enough to almost make her drop the blade and encouraged her to run somewhat more elaborate patterns, ones which simply wouldn't have been possible for people without Slayer speed and reflexes.

By the time they made it back, the Big Brit was almost catatonic, only his eyes were moving, tracking the blade, as the rest of him froze solid in the instinctive hope that if he didn't move, the predator wouldn't see him.

The Bitch jerked him out of it by pulling him out of the truck and away from the blade. A shove sent him towards the back as they began to unload the pile of corpses. Sheathing the blade at her waist, Faith headed inside, passing Harmony dressed in the dullest clothes she'd ever seen the preppy girl wear.

After hours on the road, both ways, Faith wanted the ridiculously large tub that her bathroom had. Some part of her thought that the bathroom was a bribe to get her to stick around, or a trick to make her soft. The rest of her laughed at that, not because it was a foolish idea, but because either way, she'd do what she always did with things like that, take the bribe and do what she'd planned to do anyway, or take the luxury, then not get soft.

All thoughts on that point were driven from her head by the outfit Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was wearing. The usually prissily businesslike ex-Watcher was wearing a rubber apron she'd only ever seen butchers wear, over jeans and a ragged t-shirt, the likes of which Faith hadn't believed he would own.

That actually did manage to distract her from the attraction of a long bath. Faith stood there slack-jawed, staring at him. Wes cocked his head and stared right back at her for a moment, lips moving as he counted to see how long it took Faith to manage words. Twenty-three seconds, as it turns out.

"What the hell?" she asked.

"I hear the operation was a success and you were most…effective in the field. So I'm uncertain what has surprised you now."

"You can stand there, wearing that, and ask what surprises me? Seriously?"

"Oh! This," he waved a hand. "It's my dissection ensemble. Harmony-approved, though that took a bit of convincing."

"That does not answer any questions. At all."

"Well, when dissecting demons, bits tend to splatter. Not as much splatter as vivisection causes, as your ensemble demonstrates."

Faith grabbed her head in irritation, ran a hand halfway through her mane, then swore vilely as she accidentally yanked matted hair. She tried to remember what vivisection meant, then decided she didn't care. "Why would you be dissecting demons?" She finally managed to ask.

"Skilosh demon parts are valuable, both mystically and materially."

"Oooo, what's my cut?" Faith asked with a bounce that was not as impressive as it usually would have been, given her recently comatose state.

"Are you going to come help dissect demons?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"How much you'll pay."

"Not that much, and you've already made plenty today."

"No I haven't."

"Well, if you say so, I guess you'd know better than I how much is plenty, but personally, five thousand dollars in a day seems like plenty."

"Wait, what?" Faith asked.

"You weren't listening to the briefing, were you?"

"Of course not! But I would have heard you if you'd said you were paying me five grand."

"I'm not."

"But you said—"

"The city of Cleveland is paying you five grand."

Faith caught him by the shoulder and squeezed hard, "Okay. Explain. In small words. Why is Cleveland paying me five grand?"

" _At the briefing_ ," she squeezed hard (for a Human, not for a Slayer, as that would have shattered his collarbone) and he just grinned at her, "I explained that we have two contracts with the city of Cleveland. One is for press releases and cover-ups regarding events like those which just occurred—"

"Right, fine, helping with the cover-up, and how did I do that?"

"You didn't, in fact you didn't even help move the bodies, as I understand it."

"How did you know that?"

"The same way I know you did well in the field, Jane called in and reported, since she took her cell phone, instead of leaving it behind."

"I don't have a cell-phone!"

"Because you didn't pick it up. I mentioned it at the briefing." Faith stared at him. "You know, you might be less surprised if you listened to me when I talk."

"Okay, I no longer care about why I'm getting the money, now I just want to know where it is."

"In your bank account." Faith stared at him. "The one I had set up for you? Into which I deposited all your assets I could find? As well as the portions of the sale of your apartment I managed to get my hands on?" Faith continued to stare at him, her hand falling from his shoulder. A flush began to climb up thin cheeks, "Which I told you about four different times? All the papers for it are in the bag I gave you?" Faith practiced her completely blank stare, partly to cover embarrassment at having missed something that actually mattered and partly because it was clearly infuriating her ex-Watcher, "Do you listen to anything I say?"

She couldn't resist either the smirk crossing her lips, or the urge to say, "Sorry, what was that?"

A glare bounced off her, then a smirk crawled over his lips, "So I assume you don't want to know anything more about the account?"

"Since all the details are in my bag, no, I think I'm good," Faith countered.

"Argh!" Wes threw his hands up and tried to slide around her.

He failed as Faith caught his shoulder again. "I do have one question."

"You lost the right to ask questions when you ignored my answers!" Wes snapped.

Her hand tightened, stopping him from pulling away. "I need to know why it's five grand. See, if you're cheating me, then I'll rip your head off, put it on a stick, and carry it around until it becomes one of those little shrunken heads, then I'll put a chain through it and wear like a necklace so everyone knows not to cheat me."

"Well that was…graphic," Wes said, but he didn't flinch, or retreat. Not that the latter was really an option, with her grip on his shoulder. Nor had he winced under the iron grip of the Slayer, who was, against her will, impressed. "But, your concerns are unwarranted. Resolving the situation required the completion of two tasks, the elimination of the demons and curing their victims. You refused to participate in the latter, therefore you were entitled only to a portion of the funds which paid for the former. As the contract did not allocate the amounts between the two tasks, I assigned them equal weight. Total payment was $20,000. Based on my understanding of events, I allocated you the same amount as the rest of the team put together. If you wish to argue that was in error, I will be happy to hear you, however, I should point out that this was not based solely on number of kills. I allocated approximately a thousand dollars to each of you for participation, therefore, for the portion actually reserved for payment based on performance, you received twice as much as everyone else, put together."

Faith stared at him, considering how many the SWAT team killed, then slowly released his shoulder and stepped ostentatiously aside. "You get to keep your head. This time."

"Thanks ever so much."

Faith slid past him.

"Wait a minute. If you didn't listen to the briefing, how did you choose which job you wanted to do?"

Faith didn't turn around. "This was the one that had 'kill demons' in it. Duh."

 ** _Author's Note: Writing boring walls of text is easy. Everything else, not so much. Now, the proper comparison for the payment calculation is Faith to the Brits, not the SWAT team, but she didn't quite catch that. Skilosh are demons we saw in Angel, unpleasant, but killed by gunshots. Comments/critiques are welcome. All typos must be slain._**

 ** _Next Chapter: Very short. Faith listens. Mostly. And, oh, boy, is listening fun._**


	5. Chapter 5

"Hello Faith, if you're watching this tape, that can only mean one thing, I'm dead. And our noble campaign to bring order to the town of Sunnydale has failed. Utterly and completely."

"But on the other hand," the Mayor rose on the screen, arms spread wide in the aw-shucks-ma'am post that was as natural as breathing to him and for all that he was a mass-murdering demon worshipper, was not false, "heck," Faith smiled, even in this moment, imagining his own death, he didn't curse, "maybe we won and right now I'm on some jumbo monitor in the Richard Wilkins Museum, surrounded by a bunch of kids sitting Indian-style and looking up at my face with fear and wonder," his laughter filled her ears and her smile broadened into a grin automatically responding to that sound.

"Hi Kids."

"But the realist in me tends to doubt it. Now, Faith, as I record this message you're, uh, sleeping and the doctors tell me you might never wake up. I don't believe that. Sooner or later, you will wake up, and when you do, you'll find the world has gone and changed on you."

"I wish I could make the world a better place for you to wake up in. But tough as it is to accept, we both have to understand that even my power to protect and watch over you has its limits. See the hard pill to swallow here is that once I'm gone, your days are just plain numbered."

"Now, I know, I know, you're a smart and capable young woman in charge of her own life. But the problem, Faith, is that there won't be a place for you in the world anymore. By now, I bet you're feeling very much alone."

"But you're never alone. You'll always have me. And you'll always have this." He laughed and held up a box.

"Go ahead, open the box. Don't worry, it's not going to bite, that's my job. Go ahead, open it." Faith tore through the bag Wes had given her. There was no box, nor was there anything she didn't remember. The gift was gone.

"Surprise! See, you don't get these in any gumball machine. When you've been around as long as I have, you make friends. And some of them forge neat little gizmos like the one you're holding right now. And here's the good news, just because it's over for my Faith, doesn't mean she can't go out with a bang!"

The door was closed. And locked. Faith had searched the room thoroughly, despite the fact that Wesley had agreed to remove any cameras. The search hadn't turned anything up, which wasn't a surprise, Wesley might still be a tool, but he wasn't an idiot, anymore. He wouldn't spy on her in a way she could find. So she'd had a fun conversation with the Big Brit, as he was the only one of the lot of them who seemed to be following when Wes started talking magic and by the end of the conversation, she knew how to look for common observational spells and he knew that he should answer her questions more clearly and in _American_ damnit!

That hadn't turned up anything either. So Faith was quite certain she was alone. Loud music filled the room and now her ears as the sound of the Mayor's voice was no longer coming through the headphones she was wearing. No one would know she watched it. No one would know how she reacted to it.

She still didn't—couldn't cry. It wasn't in her nature.

So instead she did the next best thing and got absolutely furious. It was late, everyone except the pair of Brits on night watch was asleep. They thought they were quiet, making their rounds, but she could hear them, she could hear everything and she knew where Wes's quarters were. Wes, who'd taken whatever it was that the Mayor left for her. It was hers and _no one_ stole from her.

It was luck, rather than any effort on her part that kept her from running into the guards. Their luck, to be specific, as she was in the mood to hit something and would have walked right through them. Well, over them, after knocking them down and putting the boot in a couple of times.

Faith did not stop when she heard the noises coming from the rooms Harmony and Wes shared. She did not even slow as she approached the door. It was locked, but the handle came off in her hand and a heavy kick sent the door off its hinges, falling back against the wall. Wes and Harmony were separating on the bed, blankets shifting and revealing tantalizing glimpses of flesh, which reminded Faith that a brief romp with a fit, but tired and wired, cop wasn't nearly enough to make up for seven months of enforced abstinence. Suppressing her libido with fury was not her usual technique, but it worked well enough, mostly.

"What the f—" Harmony began, stopping when she got a kick to the gut that sent her flying back to smash the frame and glass protecting a truly hideous painting of a unicorn. Unfortunately, the painting survived undamaged. The same could not be said for the vampire's back. She was up and moving in moments though.

Not fast enough to prevent Faith from catching Wes in a chokehold, keeping his naked body between Faith and his irate, undead lover. One arm around his throat and the other wrapped around him in a parody of a hug that kept both arms pinned to his side. Usually this would have been a very good hold on a human, leaving them only trying to stomp on her feet as an option, but an instant after she wrapped him in it, she could feel the hands she was pinning pressing against her stomach and waist and remembered that, at least allegedly, they could burst into magical fire. She pressed forward, on the basis that he wouldn't burn himself too.

The part of her that was not focused on combat noted that a life of disrepute and exile had done wonders for the ex-Watcher's physique and that he had some interesting scars, both old and new, that raised questions. Including questions as to whether or not her assumption that he wouldn't burn himself was correct. Ignoring those questions, she asked the one she had come here for, hissing it into Wesley's ear, like she was ashamed to ask, ashamed to care, like she, the only person in the room with pants on had something to be ashamed of.

"It got broken. Sorry about that," Wes answered, as close to calm as he could manage under the circumstances.

"You broke it?" Faith shook him like a rag-doll, mostly focused on Wes, but her instincts tracked the circling, furious vampire and automatically turned to keep Wes between her and Harmony.

"No. I underestimated the Scourge commander and he broke it."

"You let him break my present?" Her fury was incandescent.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do my methods for protecting a Hellmouth with no Slayer not meet with your satisfaction? In that case, maybe you should have been awake when the Scourge sent a hundred of their scariest assholes to come steal my house, just because I'd blown up their leader along with most of his men and stolen their base of operations as my house. I do, most sincerely apologize that my method of resolving that threat does not meet with your approval, Faith." Sarcasm overflowed his mouth and covered the floor so thickly it was a surprise they didn't both slip in it.

Faith slowly released him and stepped away. "What did it do?" she asked.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Wes asked.

"It was a body-swap machine, I wonder why the old man wanted you to have a body-swap machine? Think he knew what a-" Harmony interjected, cold and catty, sliding between them, naked and too furious to even notice. Wes wrapped an arm around her and she stopped and slowly relaxed back against him as Faith tried to work herself back up into battle-fury, but was too shocked by the revelation of what the Mayor had left for her.

"I told you what I'd do if you stole from me, Wes," she said, stepping back, hands vanishing under the light leather coat she was wearing.

West stepped away from Harmony, clearing the younger woman's arms to rise into a guard posture, which they did, as she saw Wes's hands come up as well. But his hands burst into a brilliant blue flame, which made Faith's dark eyes widen. Despite what the former Watcher had told her, she hadn't really believed he could do that. She couldn't tell if what she thought was pain on his face was real, or merely an illusion from the flickering flames in the darkened room.

Her hands automatically came up, ready to fight, kill and die, even if the fury that had driven her to this midnight visit had abandoned her at the worst possible moment, just as it always did. Instinct had not abandoned her though and instinct reacted to the threat posed by the pair of angry, still-naked, lovers.

After a tense moment, Wes lowered his hands and let the flames vanish. "Yes, you did tell me, though not until almost six months after I stole the object in question. Now, if you want to take your anger regarding what happened to the Mayor out on me, you can, we certainly can't stop you, but neither Harmony, nor myself accomplished a damn thing in that fight."

"Hey! I took down a vampire!" Harmony interrupted with a stomp that would have been impressive if she hadn't been in bare feet and still was impressive, but not in the way she'd intended.

"Yes," Wes smiled, "you did, love."

Faith almost flinched at that. Affection, unmoored from lust always made her uncomfortable and from what she could see of Wes (all of him, in fact, to her moderate amusement), he was the furthest thing in the world from lustful at that moment.

"Give me what's left of whatever it was," Faith said, holding out a hand as if to shield her eyes from Wes and Harmony's nakedness, trying to convey that it was their hideousness, not her prudishness which required the action. She wasn't really sure if that came through, especially since neither of the pair of them even appeared to realize they were nude. "Later. When you both have pants on, preferably."

An irresistible blush finally began to rise along Wes's neck and Harmony (unable to blush) joined him in retreating towards the bed and grabbing up covers to, well, cover themselves. On that, relative, high note, Faith retreated back to her bedroom, staring at nothing as she considered what exactly a body switch machine was and why the Mayor would have given her one. One of the Brits-on-patrol saw her, glanced at her face and ducked back the way she'd come, without Faith even bothering to notice, or look away from the distance she was staring into.

 ** _Author's Note: Sorry about the short chapter, but doing anything much on either side of that wasn't really on._**

 ** _Next Chapter: Faith listens again. This time she gets several giant walls of exposition. So much fun! Also, people have lunch._**


	6. Chapter 6

A mass of steel and broken glass in a simple wooden box was placed on the tray containing her breakfast, left outside her door. The Brits, despite being consummately professional servants, had learned not to bring breakfast in to her, as Faith kept an unpredictable sleep schedule and was…unpleasant when awoken.

Wes had not provided a note, however Faith knew what it was. It felt powerful, even in its broken state. A hand touched it lightly and jumped back as it shocked her. She closed the box and put it on her shelf, doing her best to pretend that it had no effect on her and that none of this had ever happened. The Mayor certainly hadn't affected her that much. Nothing ever affected her that much.

The tray had been sitting for a while, but the staff had learned to only make her food which wouldn't go bad just from sitting for a few hours, while Faith tried to wake up. Wolfing down the massive meal left her looking for something to do. A quick walk around and she found Harmony playing with a couple of the Brits, while Wes stood by giving them pointers.

Faith wasn't looking to be trained anymore, certainly not by Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, but she was bored. Harmony casually slid between the Brits, evading their, merely human, strikes easily and flattening each of them with a single blow. They were each carrying plastic stakes (as Wes didn't permit any wood in the training room, for obvious reasons).

When all four of those she'd been facing were on the padded floor, Harmony glanced around and gave Faith a glare that suggested she hadn't forgotten about last night. Thirty seconds later, they'd agreed to a bout, over Wes's strong objections.

The Humans took up position around the perimeter of the padded circle, hopefully outside the range of the combat. It escaped the observers' notice that the more experienced Wesley had retreated a good ten feet further back than the other observers. Faith took up position. After a lengthy pause, Harmony glanced over at Wes. "Aren't you going to say start?"

He started to say "No," but Faith launched herself forward the instant Harmony said "start". A solid right cross as Harmony started to turn back towards the Slayer knocked the vampire to the ground. A quick backwards roll and Harmony was kneeling, facing the other woman. Harmony dove forward to tackle Faith, only to be caught out of the air by the more experienced Slayer and slammed face first into the mat.

Faith's experience betrayed her there, because she expected Harmony to be stunned, but the former cheerleader did know how to fall (and the ground was covered in mats, not rock, or concrete, as most places Faith fought were) and she snapped out of Faith's grip, spinning, kicking and going for an arm-bar. The kick brought Faith down, but as the Vampire tried to envelop Faith's arm in her legs, the Slayer rolled into her grasping arms and punched her viciously in the stomach.

Harmony kept her grip on Faith's captive arm and managed to get her legs across the Slayer's chest, pushing her back before she could land more than two or three additional blows. Faith swore as she felt the Vampire push on her chest and pull on her wrist, hyper-extending the elbow in a painful manner. Faith sorted through memories, finally finding the counter that her Watcher had taught her.

It didn't work. Harmony was simply too strong and the grip was too tight. Elbow inching towards the ceiling, as her wrist was pulled towards the floor, Faith kept herself from screaming by an act of will.

"You'll note," Wesley said from a significant distance away, but loud enough to be heard by Faith, "that standard Watcher training imagines that a Slayer should fight the same way as the rest of us, just faster. This ignores the fact that her superior strength would let her break a hold like that one in any number of ways unavailable to us. For instance, she could simply roll over."

Faith considered that comment for a moment, then gritted her teeth and used her free hand to grab Harmony's leg and with a mighty heave, yanked the Vampire up off the ground and into an arc towards the mats, compensating for lack of leverage with superhuman strength. Harmony squeaked in surprise and betrayal as she bounced off the mat, grip jarring free. Faith snapped her arm loose, sliding away as Harmony rose to all fours and landed a kick squarely on the smaller woman's ass, sending her sprawling back, face-first into the mat.

Harmony pushed herself up automatically and kicked back blindly and blindingly fast, sending Faith stumbling back and using the impact and temporary solid surface of the Slayer's stomach to push herself into a forward summersault, gaining the space she needed to get back on her feet and spin to face the angry Slayer. Faith stretched her formerly-imprisoned arm, while keeping an eye on Harmony, trying to lure the former cheerleader in closer.

Harmony didn't fall for it, closing at her own slow, controlled pace, keeping her guard up and ignoring the false vulnerability. After a long moment, Faith let the ruse go with quiet embarrassment at its failure. The fact that one ex-cheerleader vampire was giving her this much trouble was humiliating. This wasn't some major player like Angel, or—her mind shied away from any thoughts regarding Kakistos and shook herself off that thought before it got her distracted and flattened. Too late. Harmony read the moment of distraction and launched a powerful combination, aiming to rattle the Slayer's skull. Instinct foiled that, but Faith's return strikes were dodged as easily.

Faith squared her shoulders as she gained some distance and tried to think. It wasn't her strong suit, she preferred to get in close and pound her enemies until they broke, leaving the thinking to other people, but a glance at Wes convinced her he had helped as much as he was going to, given how guilty he looked about the whole business. That only left her own brain (as the Brits were cheering Harmony on).

The girl clearly had some physical aptitude, which wasn't a surprise for a cheerleader, but her skill and instinct came mostly from training, there wasn't enough of the hard edge that came from actual combat. Harmony wasn't a patch on Buffy ( _who beat you_ , her mind whispered at her), but clearly she'd been trained in the same manner, by a Watcher, her eyes flicked towards Wes, _well, a former Watcher_.

So, what were the gaps in that training? It was long on theory and short on practicality, tended to prefer elegance to effectiveness and it was a very intellectual style, designed by, and for, nerds who would always be fighting people stronger than them. That made it useful against some demons, but just irritating against most Vampires, who were weaker and slower than—Faith smirked as she finally realized what the problem was. Harmony was fighting her the way a Human should fight a Vampire and Faith's usual style was much like a Vampire's, so that might work. All she had to do, was remember her training.

That…hurt, but Faith denied the pain and pressed forward, hands moving in trained combinations, feet flashing in the pattern that would drive Harmony back. The younger woman knew the counters, but Faith was just too fast, too strong and knew all the traps and tricks that Harmony tried to use to counteract those advantages.

It took her almost five minutes to pin Harmony to the mat, only to discover that she faced the same problem that Harmony had faced with her arm-bar. Slayer and Vampire were both stronger than any Human, but they weren't particularly large and most pins depended on gravity and body-weight, which didn't work against someone who could simply stand up under you. Even worse, the open space had a distinct lack of things to let her push down on Harmony with any more leverage than her own body-weight provided.

Finally, Faith spun free, snatched up one of the plastic stakes and hurled it, end over end at the rising Harmony. The Vampire caught it out of air and a flick of her hand back towards Faith, who dropped out of the way. Only Wes kicking the feet out from under one of the Brits kept the poor observer from being skewered. The ex-Watcher must have started moving before Faith even threw the stake, as any later and he wouldn't have reached the man in time to keep the fake-wood from shish-kabobing him.

Wes rose, his suit jacket swirling around him like a cloak, his aristocratic features a calm mask, despite the fact that his glasses had slid askew and the fact that his face was flushed and his breathing uneven. "Okay, everyone who doesn't have superhuman powers, take a walk," he said, voice trying to force his voice to steady calm, despite disturbed breathing.

He wasn't entirely successful, but the Brits took a look at the plastic stake embedded in the wall, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that the plastic wasn't particularly heavy duty and the walls were hardwood panels an inch thick over insulation.

Harmony and Faith turned to face Wes, like kids called on the carpet by the principal. Then Faith remembered who she was and Harmony remembered who she was sleeping with and they stood up a bit straighter. "Okay, obviously I can't tell you not to spar, it may even be good for you to practice with someone who can keep up—" Faith and Harmony both tried to make sarcastic comments about the inability of the other to keep up, but Wes spoke over them, "better than us mere mortals, at any rate. It may help you deal with those areas where Watcher training is less than…excellent. But, you shouldn't practice with us mere mortals around," he walked to the wall and pried the stake out. It took three tries. "all right?" he concluded, passing the stake back to Faith.

"Sure, I wouldn't want to embarrass you," Faith said with a smirk.

"Yeah, we wouldn't want to show you up in front of all your little friends," Harmony agreed, with a somewhat sweeter smirk.

"That would be awfully embarrassing, to be—wait, what was that about shitty Watcher training?" Faith interrupted herself, distracted by the belated realization of what he'd actually said.

"They're designed by those of us without superstrength and speed, on the assumption that those things simply change the speed at which the engagement occurs. This is untrue. There are two other major problems with Watcher training, but they're hardly relevant to this matter. Anyway, the point is, just make sure the room's locked before you use it. Oh, and Harmony, can you show Faith how to use our scheduling system?"

"Sure, love."

"Good, then I'm off to lunch."

"Good god, is it already time for lunch? How long were we fighting?" Faith asked, having eaten breakfast just before she came into the training room.

"Not that long."

"But I just had breakfast."

"But you sleep until noon," Harmony interjected with a sardonic smirk.

"Hey, wait, what are the other two problems with Watcher training?" Faith asked, ignoring the blonde's comments with a shrug.

"I don't have time to discuss this right now. I'm off to lunch," Wes repeated, dropping a kiss on Harmony's cheek and retreating from the pair as quickly as he could.

"Faith should go with you," Harmony suggested as his hand touched the door, cutting off his retreat.

"I just ate breakfast, remember?" Faith snapped.

"And I don—"

"I can't go with you and you should have some real protection," Harmony pushed. "A trap without any muscle is just helpless," she smirked, "if cute, bait, waiting to be picked up."

"Cute?"

"Definitely," Harmony said, crossing the room in a heartbeat and dropping a light, placating kiss on his lips. Wes decided 'cute' was an okay descriptor, under those, limited, circumstances.

"Fine," he rolled his eyes theatrically. "Faith, want to come to lunch?"

Faith glanced down at the sweats and tank top she was wearing, but decided she didn't care and certainly wasn't going to get dressed up for Wes. "Not really, but I'm interested in this trap thing."

"My reservation is in fifteen minutes, can we talk about this while we walk?"

"Absolutely!" Harmony said with a bounce.

"Harmony, don't you have a lesson to finish?" Wes reminded her with a slight smile.

She pouted at him, but Faith interjected her agreement to stop them from being couply in front of her. "Okay, so, trap?" Faith asked as they walked through the ridiculously bare halls as she considered whether she wanted to go looking for some spray paint to liven the place up.

"I've spent a lot of time and money on fortifying this place, but a sufficiently smart and motivated person will find a way through that. So, instead, I give them a chance to hit me outside this," Wes waved a casual hand, "fortified facility."

"Isn't the Order of Taraka after you?"

"Yep."

"So we may have some fun during this lunch?"

"You've got an odd sense of fun, Faith. But yes, there may be some violence. The risk is higher than usual, this time around, given our activities recently."

"What, you expecting the Skilosh to launch an attack in downtown Cleveland?" Faith asked dubiously. "They're awful vulnerable to gunfire for that. SWAT could probably take them out even without our help."

Wes laughed, "Yes, Faith, but didn't you wonder what the rest of us were doing while you were smashing the renegade Skilosh? I did say there were a couple of jobs you could do, remember?"

Faith nodded, "Wait, you took care of the other jobs? I assumed that they were still waiting for me to get around to them."

Wes's smile turned into a frown, "If Harmony and I hadn't been taking care of another job, why wouldn't we have been with you?"

"Besides the fact that your girlfriend would burst into flames if she'd tried to help?"

"Fair point," Wes admitted.

"Thank you. So, what were you doing while I was dealing with the demons?"

"Do you know why the Skilosh fled after holding parts of the city as their breeding ground for decades?"

"Nope," Faith said with a complete lack of curiosity regarding this fact.

"I arranged for one of the local gangs to come into possession of certain…heavier weapons then they usually could purchase, via a contract with a, rather unpleasant, arms-dealing demon. I also arranged for them to come into information regarding the Skilosh lairs. We had an agreement that they would return the weapons once the Skilosh were dealt with—"

"That was never going to happen," Faith noted.

"Of course not, which is why I also arranged for the weapons to be nonstandard, such that they required ammunition from the same dealer, who agreed not to sell it to them once the Skilosh were dealt—"

"Which he promptly did," Faith guessed.

"Of course, which was why I placed a mystical tracker on each weapon. I can locate them and send the police to retrieve them, but first I needed to remove the, non-mystical, links between myself and those weapons. That required the death of the arms dealer and the…long vacation of my contact with the gang."

"He'll have told people."

"Of course, but that's just hearsay. So, the cops are closing in and we lifted the arms that the dealer was planning to sell. Overall, a good day. However, either the arms-dealer's associates, or the gang members may choose to seek payback. Hence Harmony's nerves."

"So, we've got an ancient order of assassins, an arms-dealer and a gang, who all want you dead?" Faith asked.

"Amongst others."

"Oh, goodie," Faith said drily.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I haven't seen any signs that the Watcher's Council has anyone in town. Or Angel. Or Buffy. Or really any of the Sunnydale team."

Faith gave him a sharp glare. "Funny man."

"Not really. But then again, I wasn't joking."

"Of course you were. How would you even know if they were in town?"

"Because I pay PIs to keep an eye on both of them. Angel's down in L.A., while Buffy's off in college."

"Seriously? A private investigator is watching a Slayer and a Vampire?"

"Not the same one, obviously. They're in different places—" Wes's tone was that of someone who was being pedantic in order to be irritating.

He succeeded. "Not the important part of the question!" Faith interjected.

"Fine, fine. It's not particularly complicated work, just planting a couple of bugs on their cars, seeing if they try to leave town."

"Why?"

"You know Faith, it would be a lot easier for us to work together if you paid attention when I talked."

Faith gave him a nonplussed look. "You didn't say anything, lunatic!"

"I told you I was still your Watcher until you fired me. Meaning, I should probably watch out for the jackasses who've tried to kill you in the past."

Faith swallowed a lump in her throat, and continued sarcastically, "And if it lets you keep an eye on Cordelia the Cheerleader, well, that's no bad thing, is it?"

Instead of blushing, or looking flustered, Wes laughed. "Oh, that's right, you missed our little moment. Good god, the complete lack of chemistry was actually painful."

"Really? You made a move on Pretty and Pretentious?"

"It was more mutual than that, for all the good that did," Wes said with a bemused and amused shake of the head as he slid into the garage, claiming a simple grey car, which would fit into the traffic without being noticed.

"But at least you ended up with Short and Stupid," Faith said with a smirk as Wes pulled the car out of the garage.

He paused for a moment and gave her a dead eyed look. "Harmony is hardly stupid. Her interests are narrowly focused, but within them, she is extremely intelligent," he concluded, letting the car move forward again.

"If you say so, but I have to admit, I wonder what the two of you talk about. Or do you just," her smirk broadened lasciviously, " _not talk_?"

Wes tilted his head at her. "We talk about the same things everyone else does, their day, their interests, what idiots committed suicide by challenging them. As for the real question, of why we're together…you'd have to ask Harmony why she's with me. I'm with her because…" his voice trailed off.

"Her tits?" Faith offered innocently.

"No," Wes's voice was even.

"You like blondes?"

"Meh."

"She'll still be smoking hot when you're grey and saggy?"

Wes laughed. "Well, there is that, but no. I'm with her because she's nice to me."

"That's it? Seriously?" Faith asked, as Wes drove somewhat awkwardly through the streets of Cleveland. He had to keep stopping himself from driving on the wrong side of the road, which he always did, but his brain was just a fraction slower than his reflexes, which made for a jerky, if amusing, ride.

"No, that's not it, she's a person, not a single characteristic." Faith rolled her eyes at this pretentious announcement. "But that's a large part of it," he admitted after a second.

"Doesn't seem like much."

"How many people have you met who were actually _nice_ to you, Faith?"

She didn't _actually_ have an answer for that.

"Indeed. Niceness was not a valued trait for me growing up. Courtesy was. But not the underlying care for the feelings of another which courtesy is supposed to be based on. Indeed, the use of courtesy to convey insult was highly prized, as was showy intellect and arrogant superiority; deceitful philosophizing and naval gazing; and, of course, worship of the dead past and repeating the same mistakes over and over again and calling it tradition."

Faith whistled. "Wow, you got some issues with the Watchers, don't you?"

"I could tell you stories," his voice was bleak, then a wry smile crossed his face as he considered what Harmony would have said in response to that. "But you asked what the other two problems were with Watcher training. The first is simply that they train you to fight alone, instead of as part of a unit."

Faith's lips curled up at that. She was the Slayer, she needed no assistance. Before she could say as much, she considered the months she'd spent in a coma while Buffy and her little friends were living it up. Clearly it was the fact that she'd been outnumbered that let the prissy little bitch beat her.

The reality, that they'd fought one on one and Faith had lost was not one she was willing to accept. Instead she went another direction altogether. She realized Wes had been talking the whole time about how that was only an outgrowth of their failure to provide support personnel. She blinked, having lost the trail of the conversation.

Before Wes could notice, Faith interrupted him. "Well, keep giving me pretty cops to play with and I'll be happy to work as part of a team," she grinned. "the fun part, anyway."

"Cop _s_ , plural?" Wes asked, giving her a raised eyebrow look.

Faith smirked back at him, pleased to have finally gotten the unusually unflappable ex-Watcher to react. "Most definitely," she purred.

Wes rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Whatever makes you happy."

Somewhere between pleased she'd gotten under his skin and irritated it had only lasted for a few moments, she grinned and tried again. "Oh, it definitely did that."

Wes just nodded politely at that and said, "That's nice."

Faith gave up for the moment, "So, what's the other mistake?"

"They prioritize secrecy over safety. Why should you wield a stake instead of a spear? Because a stake is easier to hide."

"And why use a spear at all rather than a gun, Mr. Gunslinger?"

"With vampires, that has proven less effective than I expected. It depends on the age of the vampire and how recently they've fed. Younger ones who haven't eaten recently can be knocked around or crippled by gunfire, but the older ones who've fed recently won't even really react. The last time we fought a formidable vampire, a shotgun blast to the leg didn't even slow down her advance. Though, I suppose a flamethrower might be somewhat more effective…certainly she didn't like it when I set her hair on fire."

"That might just have been vanity."

Wes smiled politely at her. "I'll take your word for that, Faith."

"Yeah," Faith preened at him, drawing attention to the sweat-stained sweatpants and tank-top she was wearing, "vanity, lust, wrath, greed, gluttony, sloth and pride, I'm an expert in them all," she concluded, the nuns having managed to drill the seven deadly sins into her young mind, as well as the idea that good girls didn't fall prey to them. Well, she was a bad girl and she very definitely hadn't fallen prey to them, they had fallen prey to her.

"I'll take your word for that too," Wes said politely.

"No need to," Faith said, before launching into an elaborate story involving her actions which proved her badness.

Wes made it to the part which was supposed to demonstrate her lustfulness before he broke in. "Of course, the other reason that failure to use modern technology isn't a failing of the Watchers generally, is that several factions do, in fact, make extensive use of modern technology. Indeed, I learned to shoot at the Watcher's Academy. Though that was to hunt. Shotguns and rifles, not pistols…"

"Wait, there are Watchers who use modern technology? Does that include computers and," she flicked his glasses, despite the fact that he was driving, "contact lenses?"

He batted her hand away. "As well as sniper rifles and car bombs."

She could see that he wanted her to ask about the factions, so he could lecture her on them, so she didn't. Faith was perverse in oh, so many ways, and had to get her kicks where she could. Instead she smirked and simply said, "Too bad you don't belong to one of those groups, then you could lose the glasses."

"Ah, but I was fired and placed outside the bonds of all factions, so I am free to choose what technology I make use of and what I don't," Wes said, shifting very slightly, so Faith could see the pistol holstered under his suit jacket and the second holstered in the small of his back.

"You really want to tell me about these Watcher gangs, don't you?" Faith asked, deliberately referring to his exalted 'factions' as 'gangs' for shits and giggles.

Wes's jaw worked as he tried to come up with a proper response to that, prompting Faith to giggle at her Watcher. She tried to convince herself that it was either a snicker, or a snigger, but somewhere, deep inside, she had to admit, it was a giggle. The temperature of his glare rose, prompting her giggles to turn into guffaws and finally Wes simply sighed and admitted he did, in fact, want to tell her about the Watcher factions.

"Life's hard all over."

"Well, you're about to have a nice lunch, which I'm going to pay for, so it's not that hard. At least for you," Wes said, as he pulled into a parking lot and paused, pulling up a radio and spoke to one of the Brits, who confirmed that they were secure, as best he could tell.

The restaurant was a nice one. Most everyone else there was wearing dress clothing of various sorts. They got a few stares, well, Faith got a few stares as Wes was wearing a perfectly respectable suit, even if he didn't bother with a tie.

Faith considered the breakfast she'd just had, shrugged to herself and ordered the surf-and-turf, only half because it was the most expensive thing on the menu. Wes ordered a salad and accepted the mockery this earned him with good grace. They made it half-way through the meal without doing much speaking as Faith plowed through the massive meal in front of her.

Instinct snapped her head up and towards two people who walked in the door. She couldn't have said why, but her eyes tracked them. The lead man was a fit black man, with short hair, a thin face and hard brown eyes. The second was…big. He was also white, dressed in leather and looked like someone had redecorated his face a couple of times using a mallet. But mostly, he was just big.

The black man sat down across from Wes, who continued to eat his salad, black-gloved hands nimbly handling the fork to pick out the bits of chicken and avoid the tomato. His bodyguard stood behind him, opposite Faith, keeping a wary eye on her and his hands free and within what he thought was easy reach of whatever weapons he had on him. If he actually went for them, he'd discover that against Slayer speed, his weapons were in fact far too far away (of course, they'd have been too far away even if they were actually in his hands, but still, it suggested they didn't know who they were dealing with).

The silence stretched for a long minute, only the sound of Wes chewing breaking it. A second before Faith got bored enough to either punch someone, or make a sarcastic comment, the ex-Watcher spoke, "I'm afraid we already ordered. If I'd known we were going to have company, we'd have held off."

"Speak for yourself, Wes," Faith put in, flipping the steak knife easily and cutting through the thick slab of meat with a practiced hand, very deliberately trying to unnerve the pair of Humans who thought to intimidate her and her Watcher. Not that Wes was her Watcher, not really, it was just—the point was Faith wasn't going to be intimidated by anyone anymore.

"Very true, I'd have held off, Faith would have continued to eat her way through the menu, as if this was her last meal."

"I have to stock up on good food, your cook insists on preparing those ridiculous British dishes. Honestly, sometimes I think you folks went on your little world conquering tour just to get some cuisine that wasn't British," Faith teased him right back, then her eyes widened as she realized that she'd actually teased him, in a friendly, rather than hostile manner. After a moment, she decided it was merely a front for dealing with this strange stranger, nothing more.

"I do apologize for interrupting, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. I would have called first, but your number is not in the book and abducting one of your associates and torturing the information out of them seemed likely to make a bad first impression, given how thoroughly you responded to the death of Ms. Jones. For a man who plays on the side of the angels, you play rough," the man across from them interjected.

Wes weighed the information the man had about him for an instant, then responded with a professional and professionally false smile, "You have the advantage of me."

The man smiled, but pretended they were exchanging social niceties. "Emil," he offered, along with his hand, which Wes didn't take, though Faith did, her grip so tight that she could swear she felt the bones bend under her fingers, though the man's expression never changed.

"Is that it, just one name?" Faith asked.

Emil nodded. "It's all I need."

"Like Cher?" Faith asked, with false innocence, shooting a glance at Wes as if she expected him to pick up the thread she was offering and offer another mononym-sporting celebrity to insultingly compare Emil to. He did not.

Emil nodded again, unruffled, "Exactly. In fact, it's funny you should say that, because _Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)_ was playing when I… _took over_ my current business. There's a certain irony to that," he concluded, reaching for a roll so they could see the flash of a gun holstered under his shoulder.

The waitress's arrival broke the tension. "Can I get you gentlemen anything?" she asked Emil and his blocky guard.

Emil snapped something in French, which the waitress apparently recognized as the name of a dish, writing almost a page of notes, suggesting whatever he'd said was complicated. The waitress looked at the guard who remained standing and ignored her so completely she might as well not have existed. It took a few seconds, but she got the hint and evaporated like a good waitress.

"I admit to wondering why you went to Divian for that merchandise, instead of me, but then he suffered that unfortunate accident and I was pleased not to have your business," Emil gave a small smile which failed to be self-deprecating. "First time I've ever said that. But then I realized that because of my construction techniques your…markings wouldn't have worked."

"That's an interesting claim," Wes said, hand rising, drawing the guard's eyes. A finger traced a pattern in the air. Emil sketched a response and for almost a minute they continued in that manner until Faith got bored and made it clear. Emphatically.

"Full points for knowledge. Half-points for execution," Wes said as he lowered his hand back to his fork and took another bite.

"Indeed. I lack your dexterity, which is impressive, since you're wearing gloves. Indoors. While eating," Emil said, not asking a question.

"Thank—" Wes began, in what was clearly going to be a nonanswer.

Faith gave up on this nonsense. "Okay, what do you want, lunch-crasher?"

Emil shot a glance at her, then looked back at Wes, clearly expecting him to do something, or say something to Faith to keep her from interrupting their byplay. He did not. Emil turned back to the task at hand. "With the unpleasantness of Divian behind you, I can't help noticing that you do not have anyone to supply you with…merchandise. And for an up-and-comer like you, that could…limit your options in the explosive…growth department."

"Of course, I have no idea who Divian is, or to what sort of merchandise you're referring. We are simply a consulting firm. However, if you have some…office supplies for sale, I'd be interested. I'm always looking for new suppliers, but I'd need to see your goods. I don't buy sight unseen."

"Thursday, 3 o'clock, where poor Divian suffered that accidental decapitation," Emil said, rising and walking away before Wes could respond.

The guard kept an eye on Faith and Wes until Emil made it to the door, then followed him out, though his eyes never left the pair. The two of them turned to each other for a moment, sharing a moment of commiseration over irritating arms dealers, then looked away, embarrassed to be on the same side. Before they could think of anything to say, the waitress returned and placed three tiny plates and a small bowl filled with expensive food before the empty seat Emil had vacated.

"You're going to have to pay for that, you know," Faith said.

"I know."

"I like him."

"I know."

"He's going to be trouble."

"That does follow from the fact that you like him, yes."

"Hey! I liked Xander."

"Did you?" Wes asked, voice filled with actual curiosity, not sarcasm, or malice as he picked up some unidentifiable piece of food from the plate Emil had ordered and slurped it down.

For a moment Faith was distracted by an attempt to identify the unidentifiable, then she caught the line of their banter again, "Well, I fucked him."

"The one does not imply, or require the other," Wes pointed out.

"It was pretty good, so I don't dislike him, at least."

"And yet, despite your alleged like of Xander, I stand behind my original position that your liking someone indicates they're trouble. Mostly because Xander is plenty of trouble."

Before Faith could decide whether to be offended or amused by that comment, she recognized the second item Wes had picked up and was eating. "Are those snails?"

A quick slurp and West put down an empty shell. "Escargot."

"Which is French for snails, isn't it?" Faith asked, trying not to vomit.

"Absolutely. In fact, Emil ordered the various things he thought would be disgusting and put me off while negotiating with him. Escargot, foie gras, which is French for the liver of a force fed goose, and that's," he pointed at what she'd taken for a chicken breast, "is langue de boeuf, which is French for beef tongue," and that, he waved at the soup, "is tripe, which is French for gross."

"Then why are you eating it?"

"I don't eat tripe! I wouldn't feed tripe to a dog!" the ex-Watcher was extremely serious.

"I meant the rest of it!" Faith countered.

"The rest of it actually tastes good, if you just ignore what it is."

"I'll take your word for it," Faith said, gagging slightly as Wes took another bite of the cow tongue.

"Oh, come on, I saw you covered in blood, bile and unidentifiable fluids, eating a hamburger!"

"That was a hamburger, not a tongue!"

"What do you think hamburger is made of? Especially the hamburger at the Doublemeat—"

Faith covered her ears and began to hum. "I can't hear you! The Doublemeat Palace uses only the highest quality ingredients! La-la-la-la-la-la!"

"Have you ever even _seen_ a cow? They are not attractive animals. Though," Wes's brow wrinkled, "now that I think about it, I don't think I actually eat any attractive animals. Nor w-"

"Except Harmony!" Faith interjected, just a moment too late for it to be funny.

"I suppose that's technically accurate, for a literal, but not figurative usage of animal and a figurative, but not literal usage of eat," he said, taking another bite, going for nonchalant.

Faith smiled as she thought of something to wipe away that calm, she did so love to rile people up. "I wonder if she'll want you to when she finds out that you also ate snails and cow tongue?"

Wes put down the fork. "Ah, shit, that's actually a good point," he admitted with a flush and downed half the glass of water in a single long drink, swishing it around to clear out his mouth and snatching an after-lunch mint off the bill of the table next to him. The woman reaching for the bill squawked at him, but a glare from Faith silenced her, except for minor grumbling about how tattooed whores shouldn't be allowed in nice restaurants.

Faith considered punching her, but for the moment she was much more interested in continuing to torture Wes. "Of course, that's only if she finds out…"

"Let's negotiate, shall we?" Wes asked, with a broad, ingratiating smile.

"You've got tongue in your teeth," Faith lied with a grin.

The next few minutes were a lot of fun for Faith, not so much for Wes. Especially as they were unable to come to an agreement, as Faith intended to play it by ear. Faith's continued teasing him for so long that her food got cold. She ignored that and wolfed it down anyway when Wes finished his food as she wanted to be out of the restaurant and back to the house, where she could torture Wes in front of Harmony.

They paid (well, Wes paid, while Faith made jokes about what he'd get for paying and then insults about what he thought he'd bought by paying and Wes ignored her) then headed back to the car.

They made it to the parking garage before Wes doubled over and coughed up blood.

Faith instinctively stepped forward to support him, then got control of herself and she stepped away, looking around for attackers. There were none. Faith's eyes widened, "Poison?" she asked as Wes tried to straighten.

He shook his head. "Magic. Heavy-duty," he coughed more blood on the concrete, staggering towards the car. "Car's shielded. Help," he asked.

Instinct drove her forward again to help, then equally strong instinct drove her back, not wanting to get close to a man under attack, but rather to defend herself. For a long moment she hesitated, then Faith's world went black.

 **Author's Note: Now, niceness was not Harmony's defining characteristic in the series, I admit. However, that appears to me to be mostly a matter of perspective, in that we see her from the perspective of her enemies (to the extent she had enemies), except for her interactions with Cordelia, wherein it is Cordelia who betrays their shared values, even if those values are not precisely noble. She does appear to be nice to those who are her allies, even though she has a tendency to choose them** ** _very_** **badly as we saw in her treatment of Spike and her 'minions'.**

 **Sorry for the abrupt ending and cliffhanger there, but, well, that's what happens with a good ambush, you don't see it coming (or you do see it coming, but don't see any way around it, or…well, you get the idea).**

 **Finally, a minor note on the effectiveness on guns against vampries. I know guns were used effectively against Angel, but I assume that's because he wasn't drinking Human blood. Wes does use a shotgun at some points later in Angel, but I don't recall ever seeing how effective it was against vampires. We see him threaten one while testing Faith, but he doesn't pull the trigger. If I'm misremembering, or have missed an encounter, let me know.**

 **Next Time on Dragged Away: Faith finally actually listens to some exposition. Briefly. I do some world-building and super-Wes deals with powers beyond his control and doesn't like it one little bit.**


	7. Chapter 7

Faith was awake. She didn't open her eyes, or show any visible sign of being awake. That would have drawn attention and even before she was a Slayer, she knew better to do that when she woke up with someone in the same room as her. Now that she considered it, she'd had a _talent_ for knowing when someone was in the same room as her even before she'd become a Slayer as well. Useful talent that.

She almost opened her eyes and made a smart remark when she heard Wes's soothing light British voice, but then the rest of her body began to wake up and she felt cool steel on her wrists and some constriction on her ankles. Forcing herself to focus on what she could hear, the words sprang into focus. "They are not high on my list of priorities, Archmage."

A low voice rumbled, with a thick Eastern European accent that Faith could not identify. "Why not?"

"Though their rituals are unpleasant, their subjects are volunteers and don't die, except four times a year. Four murders a year is neither particularly impressive, nor particularly worrisome on a Hellmouth." She could hear his eyes narrow. "Indeed, given your reputation, I'm surprised you're worried about any number of murders."

"It is their beliefs, not their casualties, which prompts my interest and, therefore, should prompt your intervention. You know what they believe?"

"Yes, Archmage."

"You know what they're trying to do?"

"Yes, Archmage."

"And yet, they remain a low priority?"

"They've been trying to release the Old Ones for four thousand years and have accomplished exactly nothing. No, their beliefs do not concern me as they have made no progress towards accomplishing them."

"Ordinarily, I would agree with you. However, certain writings were stolen from a mage who imagines he is a rival of mine. These writings are sacred to one of the Old Ones and they were stolen not a hundred miles from here. As you've already had a run-in with them, you are the perfect person to handle them."

"Of course, Archmage. I'll need her assistance."

"Help yourself," the man's deep, rumbling voice was laced with minor amusement.

Wes knelt by her sprawled forms and she let her eyes slit open, dark eyes flared at him, fury clear in them and in the slowly tightening muscles of her bound body. In turn, Wes's eyes narrowed as he read the desire to snap the neck of this 'Archmage.' He leaned forward, one glove sliding off, apparently checking her pulse as a finger traced an arcane rune on her throat. Faith's world went black again.

 **XXXXX**

"She's gonna be _pissed_!" Harmony said, in an oddly eager tone.

"Thank you, Harmony."

"I mean, she was pissed before and you hadn't magicked her unconscious then."

"Thank you, Harmony."

"And we're in her room. She hasn't let _anyone_ in her room."

"Thank you, Harmony."

"And you carried her around like a damsel in distress! I bet she's not going to love that."

" _Thank you, Harmony,_ " Wes said, irritation finally leaking into his tone.

In turn, Harmony finally smiled, hugging him from behind. "Don't worry, love, I won't let her hurt you." She smirked. He could feel her lips pulling against his cheek, skin wrinkling slightly, in a way undefinably, but unmistakably different from the way it wrinkled when she shifted form. Even that did not trouble him anymore. It had, once, when he'd still been blinded by the certainties of the Watcher Council and ten thousand years of tradition. But now he was not blind. Now he was not bound. Now he was free and he was not alone. "Much," she concluded, swirling away, skirt brushing against the back of his legs as she laughed.

Wes's hand reached out towards Faith. "Is that really a good idea?" Harmony asked.

"It has to be physical contact. I'm not powerful enough for a spell like that otherwise and once cast, it has to be broken the same way."

"She's gonna be _pissed_!" Harmony repeated.

Wes couldn't quite suppress a smile, "Thank you Harmony," he said and traced the counter-sigil on Faith's throat. Then it was time for Wes's world to go black.

 **XXXXX**

Wes woke up to Harmony standing over him, looking concerned. Faith hadn't bothered to put down a rug, so his back was on the bare hardwood floor and he could feel a bump rising on the back of his skull, where it had impacted that hardwood, a sharp pain, as distinct from the dull ache that filled the rest of his head. A hand extended and pulled him to his feet. He didn't bother trying to conceal the wince, Faith wanted to be seen as powerful, self-sufficient and strong. All of which was true. But it would be better to conceal the reality of what she'd done, or almost done. Jane would check him out, make sure she hadn't given him a concussion, or done any neurological damage, which was all too possible with a blow to the head.

"You knocked me out!" Faith said, standing behind Harmony, fury and indignation in every line of her body.

Wes fought the urge to apologize. The boy who'd had to substitute arrogance for achievement and who'd had the self-esteem of wet toilet paper (soggy, easily torn and thoroughly worthless) was gone. He would apologize when he was in the wrong, but until then…"I prevented you from taking an action that would have gotten us both killed."

"Please, you think I can't take some witch?"

Wes closed his eyes for a moment, taking a firm grasp on his temper. "Understand this, the Archmage is the reason Cleveland isn't like Sunnydale, despite the fact that there is a Hellmouth here as well."

Faith glared at him.

"It's because he's bound up a gate to hell as his own personal power source, which means it isn't leaking all over the place and is instead, empowering one, crazy and crazy-strong mage. Fighting him is a losing proposition—"

"I could take him!" Faith interjected roughly. "I'm the Slay—"

"It's a losing proposition," he overrode her, voice rising, despite his attempt to control his temper, "because even if we win, all we'll be doing is unleashing the Hellmouth to turn Cleveland into a larger, bloodier version of Sunnydale. That counts as losing in my book."

Faith glared at him, arms crossed, "I still say I could have taken him."

"Maybe. With any luck, we'll never have to find out."

Her pout lightened for just a moment, then turned into a dubious, paranoid expression, "Wes."

"Yes?"

"Why'd he take me, if he wanted something from you? Why not just grab you?"

"He tried, remember the whole," he mimed coughing up blood, "'magic, it's magic attacking me, get me to the car, where its safe,' thing?"

Faith smirked. "Oh, yes, I remember, but what I don't remember is how he got me, or why he was making you cough up blood if you were just going to roll over for him."

"That wasn't his intent. He attempted to teleport me into his presence. My protections prevented that, barely and with certain side-effects, so he grabbed you instead, in order to force me to come to him."

Faith's eyes widened in the glee of a paranoid who'd been proven correct. "And why didn't I have any of those protections, oh Watcher-of-mine?" she purred the question, sliding forward, until Harmony shouldered between them and they stood there for a moment, posturing like a pair of alley cats.

"You would have let me cast spells upon you?" Wes asked before anything could happen.

"I…" Faith considered what she would have said if he'd asked to cast spells on her, forcing herself to think past her instinctive reaction. Arguing with Wes without thinking her position all the way through was an exercise in aggravation. "Yes. After all, if you wanted to do anything to me, you could have done it while I was unconscious."

Wes weighed her statement. "A good argument, though incorrect, through no mistake in logic, but a lack of knowledge. Many spells do, in fact, require the consent of those they are cast upon, though that consent can often be induced…which doesn't change the fact that you didn't know that, so might well have let us proceed. You're correct, I apologize, I should have offered."

"Then do your stuff," Faith snapped. "I don't want to be teleported again. That sucked."

"Harmony can you go grab a set?" Wes asked.

"Are you sure?" Harmony's gaze was on the other woman, who still didn't look very happy, though she clearly had enjoyed winning the argument.

"Yes, love, thanks."

"Your funeral," she said with a shrug, then gave Faith a glare, "and if it is, then yours will follow soon thereafter, I promise."

"Wow, that was almost menacing," Faith sneered, "and even more impressive, almost clever."

"Be nice," Wes said to Faith, "and don't be violent," he continued, to Harmony, who pouted at him, then moved off.

"So, if it's this easy, why don't all Watchers have their own mystical protections?" Faith asked.

"Because it would disrupt any ritual, or summoning magic they attempted. Only inherent magic is still feasible."

"Wait, what the hell are you talking about?"

"There are several types of magic which—"

"Wait, no, now I remember that I don't care. It's not going to interfere with my being a Slayer, right?"

"Nope."

"And it didn't interfere with your fires, or," she glared at him, "whatever it was you did to me back there."

"No, but then again, I have a different set of protections than you will."

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm not a fifth century Navajo mage."

"So the fuck wha—" Faith began.

"Which means that I have no way of making more of what I used to protect myself."

"And why would you have a fifth century Navajo mage's stuff?" Faith asked.

"Because I stole it," Wes said, straightforwardly.

"What?!"

"Want. Take. Have. Remember?"

"Hardly your philosophy!"

"Admittedly not, and if it makes you feel better, the man I stole it from had stolen it as well. Unpleasant little shit."

"Language!" Faith teased.

"No, really, he was a walking shit. A waste demon. I didn't even know they still existed. Disgusting things."

"Okay, I'm ignoring your nonsense now."

"Really?" Wes blinked innocently down at her, "However will we communicate?"

"I've got fists."

Wes laughed and took a wary step back, then his eyes narrowed as he saw her fists clench and calculated the time it would take Harmony to get back from the roof. "You want serious? Okay. Tell me, Slayer, do you see the problem with your philosophy?"

"Wha—"

"Want. Take. Have. Do you see the problem with your philosophy?" He repeated, stepping forward, very deliberately into her space.

Faith didn't retreat, it wasn't in her nature. "I see what you think the problem would be," her voice adopted a horrible and horribly fake British accent, "'It's immoral. It's theft. It's wrong.' Blah, blah, blah."

"Oh, yes, I apologize, I should have asked, do you see the flawed assumption in your philosophy?"

"Huh?"

He leaned over and whispered right in her ear. "You're assuming that what you want, is something that can be taken." Faith flushed. Wes continued, "and the very best things in life, can't be taken," he slid away past her, content to exit on that line.

Faith smirked at his back, "That's what you think," she said.

Harmony made better time than he thought and caught him before he even made it into the hall, one hand full of what Faith had wanted (retrieved from the roof via an awkward pulley system that had been set up to prevent her from needing to expose herself to the sun and burn to death).

"She didn't hurt you, did she?" her voice was low, threatening, and for a moment, he remembered that she was a vampire, that she had a demon in her, that she was everything he was supposed to fight. Then he remembered that he'd killed far more people than she had and that everything he was 'supposed to' do/be had turned out to be utter and complete bullshit.

"No, no. Well," he continued as her empty hand traced the painful spot where Faith's fist had knocked him down and out. The bruise was already beginning to show, the curse of his pale skin. "Not after she punched me."

Harmony tried to look put out by that, but it kept coming across as a smug smirk. "I told you she'd be pissed."

"Yes, yes, you're always right."

"I know," Harmony smirked at him and passed him what he'd asked for. Then thought about that for a moment and took it back. It wasn't that she was jealous. She wasn't. Really. It was just…better this way.

They went back inside. "Did you just leave to be dramatic?" Faith asked, when she saw Wes coming back.

"Yes."

Faith was too stunned by that admission to come up with a response. When she looked, uncharacteristically plaintively at Harmony, her eyes widened still further at the sight of what the vampire was holding. "Is that a fucking sticker tattoo?"

"It's a temporary tattoo, yes. The magic's in the ink and the two weeks it spends soaking up solar energy," Wes explained. "A low maintenance and energy cheap, though expensive, way of mass producing mystical protection. It'll last a week or so."

"Look, just cause you're afraid of the needle doesn't mean I am." Faith flexed at him, her tattoo jumping, "obviously. Why get 'temporary' tattoos every week instead of just getting the real deal?"

"Several reasons. Most obviously, as I said, the power is limited. A permanent tattoo would just become a decoration. Also, you don't really want this ink under your skin. Honestly, you probably don't even want it on your skin, but better some skin irritation, than getting teleported a hundred feet up in the air."

"Just skin irritation?" Faith asked, a little nervously.

"Hopefully. It's not like we've done double-blind pharmaceutical studies. But we've been using them for two months and no one's had worse than a rash. Yet."

"So comforting, Wes."

"I try. Now, it needs to go near the center of your body, so you know, choose a spot and put it on, I'll be…not here," he said, turning away as Faith started to lift her shirt.

"What's a matter, see something you like?" Faith teased.

"Yes," he dropped a kiss on the top of Harmony's head as he passed the silently glaring vampire and she melted just a bit, then froze right back up as he left the room.

"So, where do you want it?" Harmony asked, holding it up. "Hip, stomach, or back?"

"Where'd you put it? Wait, I know, tramp stamp, righ—" Faith finally got a good look at the temporary tattoo. "That's a kitten," she interrupted herself, in the same flat tone which she might have described a cockroach, in her shoe, when she woke up, which she didn't discover until after putting the shoe on…with no socks.

"Duh! I wasn't giving you one of my unicorn ones," Harmony said, cheerfully ignoring (or not noticing, Faith couldn't tell) the Slayer's tone. "You have to be nice to get one of those."

"My choices are kitten, or _unicorn_?" Faith asked, incredulously.

"No! I already said you don't get one of my unicorn ones!"

"I meant that you don't have any other kinds?"

"Why would I?" Harmony asked, honestly confused.

Faith gave up on trying to explain herself (and reality) to Harmony. "I'm not wearing that," Faith's voice was flat and certain.

"Why not?"

"It's a kitten. I don't _do_ kittens."

"I would hope not! You don't even want to know what I did to those _bastards_ who were playing poker for kittens. Kitten-eating cowards," Harmony's voice trailed off.

Faith's irritation melted into curiosity. "Oh, no, I definitely would like to hear about that."

"Well, they had this meat grinder in the back. I don't know why it was so big, since the only animals in there were kittens," Harmony pouted, "poor kittens…anyway, I wanted to feed them in while they were still alive, but Wes wimped out on me and made me kill 'em first. I still fed 'em through the meat grinder though. Send a message to anyone else who thinks about killing kittens!"

Faith blinked, impressed despite herself. "Well, what do you know, you've got a bit of demon in you after all…"

"Don't we all?" Harmony countered.

"Sure, but most don't hide it so well, cheerleader. How do you hide it so well, _vampire_?"

"Um…I think it's magic or something, but all vampires can do that. Don't you know that, Slayer?" Faith couldn't tell if the Vampire was being sarcastic, or was merely dense.

"No. I meant, why aren't you like other Vampires? Did Wes stuff a soul in you?"

"Not a soul," Harmony smirked, "No. Based on what he says about Angel, that doesn't sound like much fun at all, not like—"

"Okay!" Faith did not want to imagine Wes having sex. "Then why aren't you like other Vamps?"

"Wes has this whole long explanation, I don't really get it, but who cares? He did some Watcher-smart-guy stuff, and I'm still me, just with a few," her face changed and Faith flinched despite herself, then turned it into a deliberate stretch towards the stake she wore strapped to her back (which neither the Archmage, nor Wes had taken from her), "additions. And a new allergy," she admitted. "But I made it to eighteen without eating peanuts more than a couple of times. Shame an epi-pen doesn't work on the sun."

"Or magic," Faith said bitterly.

"Nope, for that you need one of these," Harmony agreed, waving around the temporary tattoo.

"Fine," Faith snatched it out of her hands, "but you're getting some new designs. Okay?"

"Like what? Crosses?"

"Do I look like a Christian to you?" she asked, with a demonstrative and impressive bounce.

Harmony gave a little, you-have-a-point headshake, "So what design would you like on the magical, expensive, protection which we're giving you for free?"

Faith ignored the Vampire's attempt at sarcasm. "Barbed wire, weapons, letters," she flashed a smile, "big honking dicks."

Harmony didn't blush and Faith was surprised to discover she missed Wes's presence, at least she could still make the Brit uncomfortable, sometimes. "No promises," Harmony smirked at her.

Faith upped the ante and casually pulled off her shirt. "So, what do you think," she waved the temporary tattoo around, "would this look better on the front, or back? I was thinking front to avoid the tramp stamp effect, but I think a kitten right above my—"

At that point Harmony, who had been blushing and staring and then blushing about staring and then spinning around so she wasn't staring, actually did flee the room, never seeing Faith's gleeful smirk, though the Slayer's cackling giggle echoed in her ears.

"I knew not wearing a bra would pay off today. I just had that feeling," she said to herself as she glanced around for a mirror to help her apply the tattoo properly.

 **Author's Note: Okay, that went a bit off track towards the end there. What can I say, Faith's a lot of fun to write for. I still have trouble with Harmony's voice, but I choose to blame any out-of-character moments on the rather different experiences this Harmony had. Though she died both times, the situation thereafter was a bit…different. How different we will see soon. Sooner, Faith will get an answer to the question it finally occurred to her to ask. She won't like the answer much.**

 **But then again, she never does.**

 **In other news, I'll be out of town for the next two weeks and won't have an opportunity to update. Updates will resume July 29th, on schedule.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: And I'm back! I survived my trip, despite the fact that it chose to be a hundred degrees and about forty percent humidity for the whole two weeks I was visiting. It's a good thing I was born in the US in this era, I'm way too much of a wimp to have survived before air conditioning.**

"So, if it's so important that we find these cultist assholes, shouldn't we be…you know…doing that? Is there some bartender I can beat up or something?" Faith asked, as she casually interrupted Harmony's dinner with Wes.

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary," Wes said politely, while Harmony glared at her somewhat less politely.

"I thought this was crucially important, wasn't that why you _knocked_ _me out_ and carried me away like some little bitch?"

"It is important. However, they aren't demons, they're cultists. And when they aren't doing stupid and ridiculous rituals, they're just people. Think of them like their own little criminal society, which we don't know much about. And how do you deal with criminals?"

"Kick 'em in the balls?" Faith suggested.

He glanced at Harmony who shrugged, "Sorry, I'm with her on that one."

"You call the police."

"Seriously?" Faith asked.

"It's how we caught them last time. They've got influence with the local politicos, I arranged some cover for one of the cops who wanted to look into the folks they were disappearing, in exchange for certain assistance in other matters. She should still be investigating, I'm certainly still providing cover, at some expense. We've got a meeting on the books for Friday."

"All subtle and shit, but why can't I just punch whoever's taking the payoffs?"

"Because we don't know who's being paid. The city bureaucracy is a mess. Certainly pressure is being put on the police, but the people actually bringing it to bear are basing their arguments on budgetary issues, which are coming from somewhere in the city Finance department, but we haven't been able to figure out where, or even if those arguments are actually coming out of Finance, or somewhere between Finance and the City Council, or somewhere between the City Council and the cops."

"Also, it would be wrong," Faith teased.

"Well, only if you're wrong. If you're right, then I have no trouble with your handling someone who took cash to look the other way as people were kidnapped and murdered," Wes countered.

"You should be careful what you say to a murderer, princess. Wouldn't want you to be responsible for some poor bureaucrat getting beaten to death," Faith said, somewhere between mocking and bitter.

"I've been responsible for worse."

Faith's lips curled into a sneer. "Oh, for fucks sake, you aren't responsible for my actions. I chose to kill them."

"You _chose_ to kill some of them, yes, but that was not what I was referring to."

"Really? And what worse have you done?"

"Killed people."

"Bullshit," Faith searched his face for signs of hidden insults, or lies. "How many?" she asked, after finding neither.

"Four."

Faith stared at him, shocked beyond measure, then took a deep shuddering breath. "Really? One more than me? You think that's fucking funny?!"

"You've killed three people? I only knew about the deputy mayor and the archaeologist," Wes very deliberately didn't use their names. He had no need to shove her face in what she'd done.

"There was also a courier who brought the Mayor the big box o'spiders," Faith explained briefly. "And who've you killed, princess?" her voice filled with venom against.

"James O'Toole. Ellen Saint Croix. Neal Burke. Nathan Pratt," Wes's voice was even and cold.

"And who are they?"

"People I decided needed to die."

"Well, that's sure a clear answer and not obfuscation."

"Obfuscation?" Wes asked, surprised by her word choice.

"Word of the day calendar. Gift from the Mayor. You know, before you helped blow him up."

"Didn't push the button and he wasn't Human anyway, so he doesn't count."

Faith's eyes widened and fury flared there for a moment. "Not like those four."

"Correct."

"And you get to make those decisions."

"As you said, I _chose_ to kill them."

"And why would you have done that?"

"Their continued survival would have resulted in far more deaths than killing them would."

"Why not just lock them up?" Faith pushed.

"Various reasons. One couldn't be contained without extreme and distasteful measures, two had mystical abilities which made imprisonment irrelevant…"

"I can count to four," Faith said.

"The last one…deserved it and his death could protect others."

Faith stared at him. He didn't speak. "And this is the man who bragged, at length, he wasn't as long-winded as Giles. Who knew all I had to do was ask you about the people you killed to get you to clam up?"

"I did!" Harmony chimed in.

Wes's eyes instantly melted into warmth as they flicked over to the vampire who was cheerily pouring another glass of blood into her wineglass from a coffee carafe (Harmony felt blood needed to be drunk from a wine glass, as a matter of class, but recognized that it _needed_ to be warm in order to be drinkable, so the carafe was the trade-off she would accept).

"Anyway, turning to—" Wes began.

"Hang on. I just want to take a moment to bask in being the least murdery person in the room," Faith interrupted him, smugly.

"Hey! I've never killed any Humans!" Harmony snapped.

"What? I thought you said he didn't stuff a soul down your throat."

Wes leaned back in his chair as Harmony explained, quite vocally, that he didn't.

Faith couldn't resist the question anymore and turned to Wes, "Okaaaaay, then what the fuck is going on? Why isn't she a raging psycho bitch like every other vampire I've ever met? You got a magic dick of something?"

Wes laughed at that, though Harmony's hand appearing on his arm kept it from being too self-mocking a response. "Nope, just the magic hands," he concluded with a flash of jazz hands.

"Well, I don't think fire is the key to taming vampires. If it was, I'd have a pack of undead pretty boys following me around," Faith snapped.

"Are you sure you want the full explanation? It's long, involved and…theoretical," Wes said.

"I've heard it, it's boring and, sorry love, bullshit," Harmony put in, patting his hand condescendingly.

"Hey!" Wes was indignant.

"You were very brave and everything, but I think it's pretty clear that it's the product of a tortured mind. I'm here because you're fun and," she lifted her cup, "free blood! With no mobs or nothing!" Harmony put in, not adding that she loved him in front of Faith. She wasn't ashamed of it or anything, but she didn't want to be mocked for that right now. This conversation always left her feeling a little…unworthy.

"Because rational thought has been a trait of most vampires we've dealt with?" what should have been hard edged sarcasm, was gentle mockery when directed at Harmony. "Remember that big guy we ran into in Denver? The one who was using the corpses he stole from the morgue to make a giant—"

"Okay!" Harmony threw up her hands. "I lived that story and I heard the other story before and it was boring and insulting then, so I'm gonna take my blood and go," she poured a fresh bit of blood into the wineglass and headed out.

"Love…" Wes paused, looking for words.

"I'll be downstairs tossing Cavendishes around and calling it sparring," she said at the door, reassuring him that she wasn't pissed. Or at least, she wasn't _that_ pissed.

"See you down there."

"Okay, story-time," Faith commanded.

"Sorry, did you want the story, or the theory?"

"Story first. Theory if I can't see it based on the story."

"Okay, fine, so I told you, at graduation Harmony got bitten, turned and I got grabbed. The vamps dragged us both off. She was still waiting to wake up while they were playing. They weren't exactly asking questions, but I was trying to use my anti-interrogation training," Wes grimaced and leaned forward, snagging a glass (containing wine, not blood) from the table and taking a drink, clearly to buy himself time to think. "Unfortunately, lying only works if you're being asked questions and counter-accusations don't work when no one wants to let you talk. It's hard to make them when you're either screaming, or whispering because you've screamed yourself silent."

Faith met his eyes calmly, no longer surprised to see shadows there. "If you're looking for sympathy, you're talking to the wrong Slayer."

Wes smiled slightly. "Not looking for sympathy, just helping explain my state of mind. I was considering the nature of vampirism, because it was certainly better than considering my own situation. It occurred to me that certain things about Angel's situation don't really jibe well with the traditional theory that the soul of one who is turned goes to its final fate and a monster takes over the empty shell."

"You mean like why he remembered all the stuff the demon did? Isn't that just because the demon's still inside him?"

"That's part of it, though the reverse was more troublesome. Why did Angelus remember Angel's life? That can be explained by viewing memories as artifacts of the body, not the mind. Though that brings your question back into focus a bit. However, if that's the case, why is one of the vampire's first action inevitably to attack those its victim loved?"

"Because it hurts more to have been killed by someone you love than some stranger?" Faith offered.

Wes was tempted to ask if she knew that from experience. As he didn't want to get punched in the head, he resisted the temptation. Barely. "True. But consider the wide variation in vampiric behavior, for instance, the difference between Spike and Angelus, the one wishing to destroy the world, the other not. If they are truly demons, cast from the same soulless mold, why the variation in means, motives and methods. Why for that matter, do they have the memories of their body, but not their own prior existence? Now, there are reasonable explanations for this, for instance, if you imagine them as newborn demons, with only the knowledge the body they've stolen possess, it makes a certain degree of sense. This also explains the variation amongst demons. What isn't so easily explained is Angel himself. Bringing back a soul to a dead body is a form, a _successful_ form of resurrection magic!" he concluded triumphantly.

Faith stared at him blankly, not seeing anything in that statement which occasioned triumph.

"Resurrection magic is almost impossible. Does it really make any sense that Willow could do that from her hospital bed? The girl's an impressive witch, but she's hardly the reincarnation of Merlin."

"Wait, Merlin's real? King Arthur? Guinevere? Knights of the Round Table? Come on—" Faith's grin was broad.

"You want a story? Okay, the way I heard this one, the Archmage back there once tried to resurrect someone. Since he's a horrifically powerful mage, instead of killing himself, or creating a supernatural monster, he instead accidentally created the Lorain Tornado of 1924, which killed eight people and flattened a neighborhood."

"Okay, okay, resurrection bad, I get it."

"Resurrection is difficult, almost impossible, I would say, not necessarily bad, if possible. But that difficulty makes it clear that what was done to Angelus was not resurrection, but possession. His soul was trapped in his body all along, all that changed was who was in control. Which also explains why the curse that 'gave him back his soul,'" Wes making air quotes was a sight Faith would long treasure, for its sheer ridiculousness, "was in fact a _curse_. Didn't you ever wonder why anyone would create a spell which gave a soul to a soulless creature, then would take it away if he was ever happy? Does that seem like good design to you?"

"It was a punishment, right?"

"Sure, but why did the spell even exist to be cast?"

Faith gave in and asked the question he so obviously wanted her to. "I don't know, Wes, why?"

"Because," his voice sped up as he explained excitedly, "it's actually a variation of a possession curse and all such curses have an escape hatch. They have to due to the nature of the magic. All that happened was that Angel is possessing his own body."

"Didn't we already know that?"

"Yes, but the thing is, pulling a soul out of any of the hells is easy, they want to leave and demons…not so good at the whole discipline and maintaining watch thing. Pulling a soul at rest out? No, you're in resurrection land. That means his soul wasn't at rest. It was stuck inside, watching everything. Which also makes sense, given how much Vamps like to torture folks."

"Okaaay…" Faith was beginning to regret asking the question. Wes was getting the same look the Mayor got when he talked about the Ascension, or cookies.

"Moreover, this also explains targeting the family during the time while the mind is still dealing with the trauma of being killed, it's all a means of ensuring that the demon maintains control. This idea, when combined with the idea that the demon is newly born, also offers an answer to the problem of where new demons keep coming from, given that we keep killing them. Well, _you_ keep killing them, _we_ keep notes on how you killed them," he concluded with a bitterly sarcastic snarl.

As he'd gotten there before Faith could insert her own sardonic comment, she let it go. "Even if all that's true, it doesn't explain what happened with blonde and toothy."

"Based on this theory, I cast a few…anti-possession spells, intended to cast out, or at least weaken any spirit possessing a body. Honestly, I couldn't tell you if I cast them correctly or not, I was a bit rushed as she was going to wake up soon and distracted."

"What with the whole torture and fire stuff."

"Riiiiight," he rolled the word, mimicking her earlier sarcasm. "That 'stuff','" Faith could hear the air quotes, but Wes didn't make them this time. Disappointing.

"Being possessed isn't insulting, so what was the blonde talking about?"

"Well…"

"Come on, Watcher-mine, you know you want to tell me."

"So, you've noticed that Vampires are, as discussed, based in the traits of the person they're…growing from?"

"Yes…"

"And how both great evil and great good produce very evil Vampires?"

"Yes?"

"It seemed in my view, at the time, when I was in horrible pain, having just been tortured and was, at the point I was explaining this to Harmony, stoned out of my mind on the painkillers I'd stolen when I stole you from the hospital…Given all that, I explained that Harmony's…apparently limited intellect lead to a certain limited potential, which left her, Vampire or not, occupying an awkward middle ground of ineptitude and apathy which left her as not so much actively evil as capable of being grumpy…" he paused for a moment. "My current theory is more about the nature of the spells I used and the circumstances in which I used them, despite the fact that I haven't been able to reproduce this success. So Harmony still believes it's about her nature, in either a positive or a negative way."

Faith blinked and stared at him for a moment, decoding that. "So, what, Harmony's too dumb to be evil?"

"I didn't say that!" he said, though she was sure she saw a microscopic nod.

"But that I can buy. And most other dumb vampires probably get killed by their creators out of sheer embarrassment, so that's why I haven't met any of them," Faith paused, considering some of the Vampires she'd met and killed. "Well, many of them. Makes sense to me!"

Wes rose from his chair, voice dropping to a temperature Faith hadn't experienced in fifteen years of Boston winters, "You are, of course, free to believe whatever you want. However, I will thank you not to mention this theory of yours to Harmony."

"Why would you do that when I'm definitely going to mention it to Harmony?"

His gaze went flat and for the first time Faith actually believed him when he'd said he'd killed people, "No, you're not."

They glared at each other for a moment. Of course, Faith couldn't back down, but his stare didn't make pushing an attractive option either. She didn't look away, but she did speak, "So, if Harmony's fine and the cops are looking for the cultists, then what are we doing?"

"We've got plenty to do. Amongst other things we've received word that the Trade Guild is holding an auction in town. We're expecting all manner of unpleasant folks here to bid on their goods. I was planning to bomb it, but it might be more efficient to rob the Guild before the auction begins. If they don't have their stuff, then they'll have to cancel the auction and I won't have to deal with another investigation into _another_ suspicious explosion."

" _Another_ explosion?" Faith asked with a smirk.

"How did you think I got this place?"

"Inheritance?"

"No. Fiery explosion which I managed to sell as a gas line explosion rather than a stolen dynamite explosion."

"Oh, right, you said. I thought you were kidding."

"Nope."

"Wait, how'd you get them in one place if this was their base?"

"The Scourge hate other demons. Harmony baited them into chasing her, led their patrol into a crypt, where we wiped all of them out but one. It wasn't that hard, ambushes are totally awesome," he flushed for a moment hearing those words come out of his mouth. Harmony had had a larger impact on his dialect than he liked to admit, but he continued defiantly. "We let one of them go, he came back with most of the rest to crush the 'upstart vampires', went into the crypt and didn't notice until it was too late that we'd filled the main coffin with dynamite. Where we got that, I'll leave up to your, undoubtedly fertile, imagination."

"Don't worry, I'm sure it was _totally awesome_ ," Faith said with a broader smirk.

"It was," Wes agreed with a smirk of his own.

"Fine. Tell me about this 'trade guild'."

Wes could hear the air quotes and the failure to capitalize Trade Guild. "The Trade Guild was created by renegade Watchers—"

"Is there any other kind?" Faith interrupted him.

"Yes." West returned to his original point without bothering to pause. "They specialize in the sale of mystical artifacts. Indeed, another advantage of robbing them is that we can check and see if they have the text the Archmage wants."

"Plus we get all their stuff!"

"Indeed. However, though their security will be bound demons, the Guild members are all Human. Is that going to be an issue?"

"Please. Three, or thirty, I'm exactly as damned either way," her voice was somewhere between bleak and joking.

Wes stared at her. "Well, that's worrisome in about forty different ways. But let's start with, no you're not."

"Yes, yes, there's always more room to fall, but once you're over the edge, that hardly matters," Faith said.

"Oh, for crying out loud. I'll take that self-punishing nonsense from Angel, he was born and sired before the Enlightenment. 'Oh, I'm damned; oh, I'm cursed, oh, I'll never be redeemed, oh, I deserve this!' For crying out loud, what a whiner!"

"Hey!"

"Let me take a stab in the dark and see how close I can come to what Angel told you. I studied him you know, read all of Giles's diaries on the Vampire. His self-flagellating nature. His conflation of murderer and monster. His power games, control games. Universalization of his own Vampiric experience, despite the fact that even for a Vampire, Angelus was an abomination and enjoyed being one. So, I'm guessing he told you about how addictive it was. How you'd need to struggle against it. How powerful and good it made you feel. How's my guessing?"

"Not bad. Though he offered redemption too without even asking me to spend the night, almost like this neighborhood preacher back in Boston. He wanted me to spend the night," the razor-edged smile appeared. "He had chains too, but not ones thick enough to hold a Slayer."

"Nice deflection."

"Nice shrink-talk Wes. There a point to this?"

"He told you what you felt when you killed and you believed him," Wes took his glasses off and placed them on the table as if he couldn't bear to look at her.

Silence greeted that.

"Am I right?"

"Maybe," Faith admitted with a grudging shrug.

"I'm not surprised. It certainly fits with what Watchers teach Slayers. A divide, innocents on one side, monsters on the other. If you aren't the one, then you must be the other," his voice was almost soft, and he picked up the glasses and put them back on. His blue eyes locked on her dark ones. "So tell me, in your words, not in Angel's words, what did you really feel when you stabbed Mr. Finch in the heart with a stake?"

"How do you know Angel wasn't right about me?"

"I don't _know_. You're the only one who _knows_. You get to choose if you wish to share that with me or not." _But_ , he did not say, _if you were truly a hungry predator, getting her first taste of a kill, then you sure didn't act like it. Lying to Giles, hiding it from me. You didn't kill me, or torture me, or do anything but knock me out after I tried to drag you off to the Council…but perhaps, I was not worthy prey. Or perhaps that's my own issues talking. Focus._

For the first time, she treated him like her Watcher and gave him the respect of providing him with the truth. "Triumph."

He didn't flinch. He'd asked the question and he'd deal with the answer. But what was the question he'd asked…what had she felt when she stabbed him. But then she'd believed him to be a Vampire. Fair prey by all the rules they'd given her. "And when he didn't turn to dust?"

"Shock. Disbelief. Fury." She paused. He waited. "Shame."

"And the others?"

"Success," her eyes flicked down.

"What did you feel when you took down the Skilosh Demons?"

"Triumph."

Wes got up, "I'm not worried about it," he said, heading for the exit Harmony had used. He paused at the door. "But if you are, I can tell you what I do." Blue eyes flicked over to see her reflection in the window by the door. She nodded, but didn't speak. "I tell someone whose good regard I would not care to lose. If I cannot justify it to her, then I cannot justify it."

"Harmony is your conscience?" Faith asked, disbelievingly.

"No. I'm my conscience, just as you are yours. But a second opinion is always helpful."

"And yours is that you aren't worried?"

"You're willing to kill Humans, you're eager to kill Demons. That's about my own position. We should avoid killing any of the Humans in the Guild. We don't want a war."

"And, bonus, it'll look like we're taking action, as they sell mystical crap and the kidnapping douchenozzle will think they might have it."

"And even when we come up empty, it may cause conflict between the Guild and the Archmage, at least if we leak the proper hints in the proper place. Which I'll take care of," Wes agreed, opening the door. "Would you like to go over the plans now, or later?"

"Let's get this done," Faith said, snatching the leftovers off Wes's abandoned plate.

"You know," Wes observed after he led her down to the library, while keeping her waiting outside until she finished eating the leftovers, unwilling to let her into the library until she didn't have any food in her hands, "if you want more food, you can just ask, or even head down to the kitchen or pantry and get it yourself. We aren't short on food. You could even go get some yourself, if you want."

"I could."

"I had the money cleaned and it's under Faith Laroy. There's no connection to the Faith Lehane wanted in California, if that's what you're worried about."

"No connection except it's her money," Faith agreed. Then she blinked at him. "Faith Laroy? Really?"

"I'd have asked for your input, but you were unconscious."

"Yeah, yeah, fucking coma, I missed all the good stuff," Faith bounced back as fast as she always did. Or at least she appeared to. "Speaking of which, how the hell did you get me out of the hospital with charbroiled hands and no help?"

"Harmony helped. In fact, she carried you out. Well, first I had to get her fed, which was less of a pain then you might think, given we were in a hospital…"

Wes's story was elaborate, amusing and surprisingly well told, but Faith wasn't paying any attention. The shift in her understanding of her Watcher was almost painful, while the shift in her understanding of her Watcher's understanding of her was surprisingly painless. That wasn't deserved and it made her uncomfortable not knowing what he wanted in turn. Then she remembered, he wanted her to fight. That she could definitely do. She was the—a Slayer, after all.

 **Author's Note: Okay, so some of you may note I've elided over the whole Faith-Xander choking/assault matter. There's a reason for that. Wesley doesn't know about it and Faith isn't thinking about it, not because it wasn't bad, but because she doesn't view it as bad.**

 **In Faith's experience/belief system, all men want to sleep with her and are willing and eager to take all actions necessary to ensure they succeed in that goal. This is bullshit, but it's her belief so she didn't bring it up. As for whether or not it effects Wes's theory about Faith's character, or her own explanation…we'll have to figure that out later.**

 **Next Time: We skip a hard to write theft scene and skip right to the consequences! And oh, the consequences there shall be…FORESHADOWING!**


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"How terrible is wisdom," the older man leaned in close to Wes, still bound o the chair, glasses stolen, rendering the man a blur of motion and color, "that it brings no profit to the wise."

Wes glared up at him, an effect somewhat undercut by the fact that his eyes narrowed in a futile attempt to gain some clarity on what the man's expression showed (not that that would necessarily show what the renegade Watcher was actually feeling, but even knowing what his captor was attempting to project could be helpful). This was it, despite how much he hated putting in contacts, he was going to cave to Harmony (as he always did, eventually) and get some of the blasted devices.

His captor took his sudden increase in irritation as a result of his current predicament and smiled, though since his lips didn't part, Wes couldn't see the flash of white which might have alerted him to that fact. "You know, you're the third renegade Watcher I've had to deal with," Wes said, pseudo-pleasantly before his captor continued. "And they all say that. Every single one. I'm starting to think there may be some deficiencies in our education."

This time Wes could see the flash of white as his captor grinned. "I'd say there's more of a deficiency in our salaries."

"Ah. You know, each time I keep meaning to ask a couple of questions about the quote, but I've never gotten the chance, you don't mind, do you?" Wes continued without really giving his captor a chance to respond. "First, you do know that it's a quote from a play, not actually from Sophocles' himself, right? Second, it's put in the mouth of a man whose prophecies all end in disaster because he's too dumb to figure out a way to profit from _being able to see the future_ , right? Third, the quote isn't 'when it brings no profit to the wise,' but 'when it brings no profit to the man that is wise,' okay?"

Before Wes could continue with his stream of questions, the renegade Watcher backhanded him hard across the face, almost knocking the chair over. It teetered for a moment, then the Watcher grabbed Wes by his hair and yanked him back upright. "First, the play was written by Sophocles, they are his words. Second, that's because he's cursed, not stupid. Third, it depends on the translation."

"Fair enough, but you do realize that Sophocles is where we get the term sophistry, right?"

"You do realize that that's because of anti-intellectualism in the 15th century shifting the term sophist from praising a wise man to insulting a specious one, right?" he countered.

"All fair points. Just one more question. Did you become a Watcher because you were seeking profit?"

The ex-Watcher jerked back as if slapped. He straightened like a soldier under inspection and he stood there for a moment absolutely still, absolutely silent. Then the decision was made and his lips curled in fury, a knife sliding out of a sheath in the small of the back. The blade was held with a casual competence, but his voice was shaking with fury, "I became a Watcher for the same reason you did, the same reason we all did, because it was what our fathers and their fathers and _their_ fathers did. It's what we're born for. It's what we're supposed to live and die for. Well, _I_ broke free of that on my own. _I_ wasn't tossed out like trash. And _I_ did not fail!"

"Wrong," Faith said from behind him, then flattened the taller man as he tried to turn around. Not that it would have done much good. She hadn't wanted to wear the mask, but Wes had talked her into it, partly by pointing out that he wasn't going to let even ex-Watchers know where the renegade Slayer was and that he'd kill them if he had to, but mostly because he let her pick out the balaclava she wore herself. The formerly red mask had been painted interesting, if not particularly camouflaging colors. But at least it did keep her from being identified. Probably.

"You got the goods?" Wesley asked, hands bursting into flame, melting through the ropes and the arms of the chair they were tied to as easily as they turned his gloves to ash. He pulled free and began to pick at the ropes binding his legs. Faith slapped his hands aside and ripped the ropes apart with bare hands and Slayer strength.

"Yep, three crates waiting for us down in the trucks," Faith said, eyes noting the split lip and bruised cheek Wes was sporting and paused for a moment on the way out to kick the downed ex-Watcher in a very sensitive place.

"Good. And the security cameras?" Wes asked, retrieving his glasses and letting the world leap back into focus.

"Fried."

"Then let's get out of here," Wes agreed, casually stepping on the renegade Watcher as they headed out into the halls. The theft had been carefully planned but not particularly complicated. Once communications with the outside world had been sabotaged, it was mostly a matter of letting Faith knock the shit out of their guards. Unfortunately, their mystical defense system couldn't be tricked so easily, so someone had to trigger it and suffer the consequences for doing so. Harmony had wanted to do it, but the Guild wouldn't hesitate to dust a vampire. A fired Watcher would get more consideration. Not much, but more. Enough not to get killed while Faith slipped around beating up guards and getting rid of the security cameras. It would also give him some time to spread hints that he was working for the Archmage inside the Guild, as well as all the many outside places he'd left such clues for them to find. Though, with the man unconscious, the conversation might all have been for naught. On the other hand, seeing as how Wes hadn't been able to resist the urge to antagonize the man, maybe that was for the best.

Faith led the way through a group of unconscious, or otherwise restrained/detained Humans and extremely dead Demons. "That's impressive."

"I'm the best," she said with a shrug.

"And so fast too," he said, innocently.

"Th—" Faith turned to look at him. "Was that innuendo, Princess?"

"Would I do that?" Wes asked.

"Not twice," Faith said with narrowed eyes.

Wes just smirked at her. Faith paused at an open window, "This is my exit."

Wes looked around. "Why? Didn't you have to clear the rest of the building out?"

"Yes," she admitted. "But if we go out the front, then I don't get to use this!" she flicked her wrist and managed to get the grappling hook to appear in her hand, rather than the sword (or accidentally discharging the crossbow bolt, which had been the original problem when she picked out her new, elaborate weapon from the bunch they'd purchased from Emil). "And this," she attached the grappling hook to the window frame, "is going to be _totally awesome_."

Her sarcastic, challenging gaze met his. One eyelid dropped over a dark eye in a teasing wink.

Wes met her gaze levelly, not reacting to her wink.

"You remember, like you said earlier?" Faith asked, uncharacteristically confused.

"Yes, I remember. Thanks for the reminder, but—"

Faith went out the window before he could finish his sentence. After a moment's hesitation, Wes followed her out.

"That was pathetic! You went down so slow! I'm sure mine was actually awesome!" Faith said, standing on the pavement and waiting for her Watcher to join her.

"Well, I wouldn't know, seeing as you just jumped out the window. In fact, couldn't you just have survived the fall on your own?" Wes asked.

"Sure. And that's awesome too, but you'd have broken your legs."

"Probably," Wes admitted, with a tiny smile to himself. "Can I ask just one more question?"

"If you must."

"How are you going to get the grappling hook back down?" he asked.

Faith's grin faded and she tried to flick the grappling hook loose only to fail completely, to Wes's blatant and unhidden amusement. Faith frowned, then smirked, wrapped the rope around her forearm and pulled, hard. The rope held up. The arcane material of the grappling hook held up. The ancient window frame of the mansion the Trade Guild was using for their auction did not.

Wes had to dodge the falling wood and the look he gave Faith was so amusing that she made a mental note to put him in non-lethal danger more often.

 **XXXXX**

"Well, that sucked," Harmony said, looking at the wound on her stomach.

"I know, love. But so do you," Wes answered.

Harmony glared at him. "Seriously? Right now? Seriously? I know I'm naked and hot, but seriously? It's not even your birthday. And I'm bleeding!"

"Not what I meant, Harmony," Wesley said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal his forearm and raised it to offer her the vein.

"I don't like that. For a week afterwards you smell like food," Harmony said, though her eyes traced the line of blood vessels.

"I know, Harmony, but you need to get healed up before Faith decides to join us and animal blood won't do it—"

"What about one of the Cavendishes? Isn't that what they're for?"

"Not what they meant by 'feeding us,' love. Besides, I don't really want to explain how you got cut. Do you?"

"Surgery?"

"Vampires don't need surgery."

"Accident?"

"You're way too graceful for that." Harmony grinned at him. "Usually."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome," he replied, meeting her sarcasm with sincerity.

"Fine, fine, but you're sleeping on the couch for the week."

"What did I do?" Wes asked.

"Besides stab me?"

"Hey! That's not what happened." Harmony stared at him. He frowned slightly. "Okay, it is what happened, but that sound pretty bad."

"Homemade magical ritualled me?" she offers.

"Better, I guess."

"But you're sleeping on the couch so I don't sleep-eat you."

"I haven't objected to that in the past."

"NOT WHAT I MEANT!" Harmony yelled, though she couldn't resist the urge to smile. His smile irritated her and vanished as she sank her teeth into his forearm, canines finding the vein along the bottom of his forearm. His free hand stroked her hair as she drank. She pulled back the moment she felt the wound close, then looked up at him, a wicked smile on her face as she pulled him back down onto the bed. "I guess I'll take the guest room, after I wear you out," she whispered in his ear.

 **XXXXX**

"I AM MAJOR ALEX MOORE! You will not keep me waiting on the front step like a dog that pissed in your foyer!"

Cavendish ignored the camouflaged man's anger with the casual aplomb of a man certain of his position and proprieties, who cared naught a jot for the titles, ranks, or opinions of anyone who was not a Wyndam-Pryce. He did not even feel the urge to question why the man was wearing forest camouflage while making a visit to the Cleveland suburbs, or to ask if the man had a warrant, or an exemption from the Posse Comitatus Act that would let him enforce a warrant if her were to have one. He did, however, feel the urge to ask if the man had any more appropriate attire and to offer him a complimentary, if distinctly condescending jacket. As the major had a pistol which his enraged hand was clutching, but which had, thus far, remained in its holster, Cavendish resisted the urge.

"Major, the master has been informed of your presence. He will decide if and when he wishes to see you. This sort of delay may be avoided in future if you choose to make an appointment."

"I do not have to make an appointment! The power and authority of the United States Army goes wherever the _fuck_ it wants, whenever the _fuck_ it wants," he stepped forward and poked Cavendish in the chest. "Do you understand me, Mr. Cavendish?"

"It's just Cavendish, sir," the butler said, without moving from the major's path.

"Get out of my way, or I'll go through you."

Cavendish didn't move, but he suddenly appeared almost immovable and wall-like. "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't do that."

They stared each other down. Major Anderson was a large man, with military-short brown hair, a muscular build and hard brown eyes. Cavendish was a little shorter, a lot heavier and about twice the younger man's age. He was also the only one of the pair of them that was calm, which was beginning to unnerve the officer. This wasn't how interactions with civilians went. Especially not when you were, frankly, bluffing your ass off, because you were there on behalf of a secret program which didn't, officially, exist.

"You wanted to see me?" a man asked, coming down the stairs behind Cavendish. He was taller than Cavendish and taller than the major, but slighter than either of them. Anderson might have taken him for just another suit, despite the thin leather gloves he wore and the slight bulge under his suit jacket, but for the ice in the eyes hidden behind glasses that almost made him look like an academic.

This man was dangerous. But so was Anderson and he had the might of the US army at his back. Though not, he couldn't help think to himself, literally at this moment. Still, none of that showed on his face. "Yes, indeed, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I did want to see you. See your adopted country needs you to do it a little favor."

"What's the favor and how does it pay?" Wes asked, as Cavendish stepped aside, ushering Anderson into the front hall.

"The favor is to come along nice and quiet and do what you're told and the pay is that you don't get arrested, deported, or shot," Anderson said, with an ugly smile on his face. The smile disappeared as he heard Cavendish shut the door behind him. He resisted the urge to turn. Wesley was the problem. Or so he thought until he saw the stunning dark haired woman coming down the stairs behind Wes. When he'd saw her picture, he hadn't believed she could do what she was accused of, but seeing her in motion, he could believe it. He did believe it. Still, he'd seen combat, both with the Army and the Initiative, and didn't give ground.

"I see. And what would be the basis for any of those actions?" Wes asked, not turning to face Faith, despite the fact that she was not being quiet on the marble stairs.

"Well, besides all the stuff we couldn't tell anyone, because it'd get us locked in an asylum, there's harboring a fugitive, kidnapping, murder and theft. We got that whole little excursion of yours to the Fitzgerald House on camera. I especially enjoyed the part where you said if any of the survivors IDed Faith, then you'd have to kill them. That'll play real well for a jury."

Wes flicked a hand and his eyebrows and Anderson heard the door lock as Faith straddled the banister and jumped to the floor, despite the fall of almost a story, she just flexed as her feet hit the carpet and approached, her face a mask of fury.

"And before you do anything you'll regret, you should know that all the data is at half-a-dozen different off-site facilities."

"Oh, I wouldn't regret this. You might. Briefly," Faith slid forward and her lips twitched into an ugly smile, "or perhaps for a very, _very_ long time."

"An interesting argument. Maybe we should send it to the people you stole all that stuff from. I'm sure they'd find it, interesting." Faith's hands rose. "Oh, and I've got a platoon of hardasses outside, just waiting for an excuse to shoot this place up."

"If you think that'll stop me, then you really have no idea what you're dealing with."

Anderson flinched back, sliding sideways as he wasn't going to back into Cavendish. Faith continued to advance. "Perhaps you'd like to share a bit more information regarding what it is you want, so we can make an informed decision regarding which option is, in fact, superior," Wes said with Faith playing the bad cop to his good cop. Except Anderson was absolutely certain she wasn't playing.

"Look, there's nothing sketchy about this. The US Army is doing its job and protecting people, just from more…unusual enemies than most. We need a bit of help, there's an issue with a project. You'll even be back in Sunnydale. And if things work out, we can even get the charges against you," he looked at Faith, "dropped, maybe help with your," his eyes flicked to Wes for just a moment, before returning to Faith, as the more dangerous of the two, "citizenship application," his spine straightened. "And, you know, not release those recordings to the people you robbed. And everyone else in the world."

Wes glanced at Faith, then shrugged. "And how long would this help take?"

"That depends on you, doesn't it?" Anderson asked, confidence returning as he dealt with the Watcher, not the Slayer.

"No!" Faith snapped.

"Indeed, not good enough. I think you'll agree when you hear what I propose. As you may have noticed, we do not trust you. Therefore, you will remain here. If I do not return within the time we agree upon, then you will suffer for it. An exchange of hostages, if you will."

"Absolutely not!" Anderson shrieked, as Faith also expressed her disapproval of that idea, if for somewhat different reasons.

"Why don't you check with your superiors, Major, see what they say."

The man blanched, but he withdrew to make the call. "You can't be serious about going back to Sunny-Dee. That's crazy!" Faith snapped.

Wes gave her a look.

"What will Harmony think about you running back to California?"

"She can come if she's concerned," Wes said with a shrug.

"And the Archmage? You haven't found the book he wants yet. What'll he think of you running away?"

"That's a point," he paused to consider. "If asked, well, Sunnydale is a major center of the underworld. If someone has a dangerous artifact, there's a good chance someone in Sunnydale knows something. Going there even makes a certain amount of sense."

"I…" Faith stuttered slightly, then continued more forcefully. "I'm going too. This is bullshit, but I ain't scared of Sunnydale."

Wes paused, considering his response, then went with the straightforward and straightforwardly honest. "Thank you."

"I'm not doing it for you. He's offering me a fresh start. I'll earn that," her chin rose and black eyes turned into the very gates of hell, "and _I'll_ see to it that he keeps up his end of the bargain and knows what I can and will do if he breaks his deal with us."

West smiled at that. Despite the rest of her words, she'd said us.

 **XXXXX**

Jane Cavendish was not going to spend the next six weeks inside, waiting for the US Army to get bored and go away. News and requests came in, even with the young lord and his harlots out of town. The world didn't stop turning and people didn't stop dying. As her father had been left in charge, it was just a matter of convincing him to let her and a few of the cousins out to handle things. That wasn't too difficult, especially once he saw the capabilities of the new weapons the young lord had purchased from Emil. They wouldn't be going unarmed, even into a police station, which was, indeed, where they were going.

Detective Biren Huang was not the most pleasant person in the world, which was one of the reasons she didn't get the support her investigations deserved. The other reason was that the disappearances she was investigating were tied into the cult of the Old Ones, which had quite a bit of influence in the city government.

Detective Huang looked up at Jane as the woman stopped in front of her desk. "Where's little lord Fauntleroy?"

The exact balance between personality and cultist influence was a matter of great debate amongst the Cavendishes. At least the ones who hadn't had to interact with her.

"Kidnapped by the US army to solve all the problems they couldn't. What did you find?" Jane asked, trying to match the older woman's tone.

Detective Huang sneered at her effort. "Because these assholes," she waved at the rest of the bullpen, which studiously ignored her comments, except for one junior, but very large detective, whose attempt to interject was stopped by his older, smaller, fatter and scarred partner, "wouldn't know a conspiracy if it bit them on the ass, I can only keep an eye on those members who are also up to other illegal shit. That isn't many of them. Still, of the six I've got surveillance on, one has disappeared and two died in 'accidents,' all in the last three days."

"50% casualties?" Jane asked, surprised.

"Oh, good, you can do _division_ , I'm so fucking proud of you, kiddo. Now, I can't give you the files, of course, but I can give you this piece of paper," she passed over a sheet of notepaper, with six names, one starred and two circled, "and tell you to get the fuck out of here before one of these no-balled bastards calls IA on me for involving outsiders."

"Thank you, detective," Jane said, answering crudeness with courtesy as her father had taught her. It did not provoke the embarrassment in Biren which it had in her, when her father used it against her foul-mouthed self as a teenager. Instead the detective didn't even appear to hear her, returning to her paperwork without looking up.

The local news had stories on the deaths, which gave them a place to start (and a conversation with the coroner gave them photos of one of the corpses, in disturbingly graphic detail, which didn't suggest anything mystical about their deaths, unless someone out there had magic .45s). Unfortunately, that didn't get them anywhere as Jane and her cousins were really not investigators. After wasting most of a day talking to people who either knew nothing, or were unwilling to say anything to a bunch of Brits, they headed back home. A pleasant family meal was blighted by the silence of the cousins she'd brought with her (who had not reacted well to the photos) and by her own endless chatter about figuring this out before the young lord got back from his jaunt.

The presence of Major Moore, sitting in the corner under the eyes of everyone, attempting to figure out how to eat British cuisine (or at least which parts he could eat) didn't help matters. He did, however have a few suggestions for their investigation, mostly based on the few physical details they had and his experience with firearms. Well, and his absolute certainty that his input was valuable on really any subject. The worst part was that he was correct and his suggestions were useful.

Even more useful was her father's reminder that the young lord had made other contacts amongst the police and had recently done a major favor for someone on their way up. Namely, he'd provided them with the largest weapons bust in Cleveland history and assisted them in capturing a majority of the members of the second largest gang in the city. That sort of thing was good for the career and good for putting someone in your debt.

One of the country cousins pointed out that they had access to the young lord's accounts. They were flush at the moment, they could hire a private investigator or two. The cultists had some influence, but they weren't everywhere, the right PI could do a lot of good work. After dinner, Jane would make a few calls and got things moving in all directions. It sucked that she wasn't the best at everything, but the reminder was probably good for her humility.

She was still thinking that when the alarms, physical and mystical, warning of invaders on the grounds began to scream.

 **Author's Note: Next time, we get back to Sunnydale. You know, eventually.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"I'm so _fucking_ bored!" Faith said. Well, repeated herself. As she had every few minutes for the last hour.

Wes gave her a look of mixed sympathy and irritation. The ratio of the first to the second had been decreasing for the last hour.

"This is fucking ridiculous!" she added, somewhat more creatively, waving at their spartan surroundings.

"What did you expect, a limo?" one of the two soldiers sitting across from them finally responded, though he'd made it through more repetitions in stubborn, disciplined silence than Wes would have expected. Certainly more than he and Harmony had made it though. And Faith hadn't bothered attempting to convince either of them to fuck her. Well, not more than once, out of boredom. Boredom was the enemy of all of them as they were travelling.

Fortunately, Wes had his books and Harmony as a distraction. Harmony had the magazines they'd bought at the base PX and him as a distraction. Though she clearly found her efforts to distract Wes to be the most distracting thing of all.

The windowless panel-van that had picked them up at Edwards Air Force Base was certainly not the accommodation Faith expected from the US military. Of course, she hadn't expected the C-47 which had gotten them to the base either, but at least that had been a military aircraft, not just a van. And the soldiers on board had talked to her. Eventually. Unlike the two guards in this van, until right now.

"Yes! You're a secret government organization! You couldn't spring for a fucking towncar?"

"The HST would be cooked alive in a town car," the soldier pointed out, jerking a head towards Harmony.

She looked up at Wes from where she sat, well, sprawled, across his lap and mouthed "HST?"

He shrugged, "No idea. Sorry, HST?"

"Hostile SubTerrestrial," the soldier glossed, politely, though his body language screamed revulsion as he watched the two of them cuddle.

"Seriously?" Wes asked.

"It looks better than vampire on the paperwork," the other soldier explained with a shrug.

Faith laughed. "Of course a _secret military project_ has paperwork. Fucking paper-pushing-pussies."

Wes was defining subterrestrial for Harmony, though so quietly that not even Faith could hear his words.

"I've never lived underground!" Harmony snapped.

"You're also not hostile," Wes noted, an arm curling around to rest on her hip.

Fangs flashed in her mouth, "Depends who you talk to."

"Excuse me, sir," the soldier said, interrupting their byplay before Faith could get involved.

"Yes?" he asked, without looking up from Harmony's glowing golden eyes.

"You need to sign this NDA," the soldier said, handing over a piece of paper.

"Do I?" Wes asked sweetly, without reaching out a hand for the paper.

"Unless you don't want to finish this job, yes, sir," the man said, with that special inflection enlisted soldiers use to make 'sir' mean 'idiot'.

"I have no interest in finishing this job," Wes said, voice low. Suddenly Harmony wasn't on his lap anymore and she wasn't a vapid teenager. Instead her eyes glowed gold, teeth lengthening, and the soldier froze, one hand extended to offer the papers to the Watcher, the other resting on the rifle slung around his neck, which did him no good at all.

The other soldier sitting beside him jerked into motion, gun rising. Faith moved, and the gun was suddenly pointed at the roof of the van. Only Wes's hand on Harmony's shoulder kept her from launching herself at the second soldier.

"As a courtesy, however, I will finish it," he took the papers from the soldier's hand. "I expect me and mine to be treated courteously in turn. Do you understand me," his eyes flicked to the chevron on the soldier's beefy arm, "corporal?"

"Yes, sir," he said. This time, it meant, 'Yes, sir.'

The NDA was long and written in legalese, leaving Wes with work to do until they arrived. Harmony relaxed back and resumed her efforts to distract him, leaving only Faith still engaged. Wes didn't try to command her back, he simply relaxed and got to work. Without an order to obey, or disobey, Faith hung there awkwardly for an embarrassingly long time, then she pressed herself against the soldier until she felt a response, then gave him a smirk and pulled back into her own seat.

The NDA was absurd. After reviewing it, Wes whined about some of the provisions, then signed it. _There, that should make them think I actually intend to be bound by it, should I need to break it. Silly people. So few people understand what it is to be a Watcher. To the extent I still am one, my only honor is in protecting the world and my Slayer, in that order._

With that done, he returned to his book.

For almost thirty seconds.

"I'm so _fucking_ bored!"

 **XXXXX**

The alarms produced trained reactions in everyone. It was a shame those reactions didn't entirely sync up, either with each other, or with the situation. Major Moore snapped to his feet, hands reaching for weapons he didn't have and trying to decode the alarm into something which made sense to him. The alarm didn't contain the content that would have told him what was happening, but flaring lights and loud noises said 'alarm' to him. So, denied information, he naturally demanded information.

The Cavendishes, in turn, began to react as they were trained, namely by retreating to the safe-room which was magically and mundanely shielded and contained their armory. The usual plan was for the Cavendishes to rendezvous with Wes and Harmony (and now Faith), who would clear the place out, while the Cavendishes watched and provided information and secured the territory the others had cleared.

If Wes and Harmony were out, standard operating procedure was to retreat to the safe-room and shelter there, then contact the others for assistance. Theoretically, with Wes and Harmony completely out of reach, they ought to call the cops for assistance. But, with no idea who/what had breached the perimeter and a US Army team sitting right outside it, that seemed like a bad idea. Jane realized this, about the time the trotting Cavendishes reached the safe room. That would leave them with no support, just trapped in the safe room. She also realized that, about thirty seconds after arriving at the safe-room.

At which point she realized that maybe she should talk to the soldiers sitting outside their gates, if someone was going to break them down. Her father wouldn't think of it, because it wasn't his responsibility. That narrow focus always made her crazy, but that was why Wes had left her, mostly, in charge.

The quartet of Cavendishes on rear guard were retreating back towards the safe room as she accosted the major, demanding he contact the soldiers. When he, somewhat defensively, if accurately, pointed out that he couldn't do that because they'd taken all his communication devices, she didn't respond. His follow-up sarcasm did get him a sharp glare from the armed guards as they sealed the room. And it provoked her father to point out that the major's communications gear was stored, in a lead-lined box, in the safe room, so it was, in fact, available.

The major and his troops then talked to one another in something which was either code, another language, or some sort of bizarre, incomprehensible dialect of English (or, more precisely, American). It took him almost a minute after the conversation was finished to admit, rather shamefacedly, that the alarm was caused by the soldiers themselves, attempting to breach the perimeter and retrieve him.

Under the glares of the Cavendishes and the weapons they were rapidly picking up, he radioed back to them and ordered them to go back to the perimeter. While being questioned by Jane regarding whether this meant something had gone wrong with the young lord and his harlots, his radio burst to life, filled with screams and the odd sound, straight out of Star Trek, energy discharges of some sort. Before Jane could ask about that, it was replaced by the sharp crack of pistol shots. The major snapped to his feet, and tried to head towards the exit, towards his men. The guards in his way almost gave way before the sheer force of his need and purpose.

A word from Cavendish reminded them of their duty and they stood their ground. Jane turned to the cousin who was working with the video security system, but the soldiers had only made it a few hundred feet onto the grounds, past the perimeter security cameras, but not within sight of the house cameras. He didn't see any movement on them, especially since the soldiers had disabled the cameras in the area.

Her eyes narrowed as she considered her options. They had a shooting range on the grounds and a few shots shouldn't produce too many questions, or complaints, or calls to the police from their, relatively distant, neighbors. However, 'shouldn't' wasn't 'wouldn't.' And Humans were being attacked by…something, on their property. She should act. The question was how.

Better to face whatever it was with alive soldiers as allies, rather than over the corpses of those selfsame soldiers whose bodies they'd have to explain to Uncle Sam, and the young lord. "Arm up. Less-lethal for the major, everyone else, goes as heavy as they can manage," she snapped.

A few words and she had the cousins deploying out of the ballroom that had been modified into a safe-room (Wes had a lot of people and stuff to keep safe and didn't believe in sacrificing anything). Half-a-dozen headed to the upper floor, taking position with hunting rifles, though there wasn't much to see, beyond trees. Still, they'd provide cover, if whatever-it-is could be lured into the open. Another half-dozen went topside to watch the backs of their snipers. Those mostly consisted of the worst shots, armed with the largest shotguns.

Her father and a quartet of the oldest were left behind in the safe-room to ensure it survived intact and that Wes would hear about what happened, regardless of what did, in fact, happen.

The rest of the Cavendishes were with her. Almost twenty of her family at her back. And the major. A quiet word had Mark and Kane at his back to make sure he didn't try anything stupid with the taser she let him carry.

Another four of her cousins would watch Luke's back as he carried the wooden box that was their one shot of taking out anything which proved to be immune to bullets. The big man was the only one of them with any talent for magic, even if it was minor, he had a shot of using the artifact he was carrying.

After a moment's thought, she agreed to let the major take point, on the theory that if there was an ambush, she'd prefer he run into it and if he tried to get away, she'd shoot him. In the leg. Probably.

They moved quickly through the grounds, towards the grove of trees grown as a wind break and marker of the edge of their property. The trees were massive and old and Wes had used them to power the mystical alarms which the soldiers had set off. They rounded a set of neatly trimmed hedges which had hidden the soldiers from view and saw half a dozen of them scattered around on the ground. A seventh soldier, wearing the chevrons of a sergeant dangled from the clawed hands of a seven foot tall creature. She looked like a statue carved from ivory, or white marble, though the easy flexing of the wings bursting from her shoulders made it clear that she was made of something more flexible. Even her eyes were a solid white. Jane's mind raced trying to remember if she'd ever heard of such a creature.

The major rushed forward, taser rising and firing. The two prongs hit the creature's leg and bounced off. The major checked his rush, considering what would happen to his fist if he tried an attack. The creature looking at him for a moment, then ignored him, "Where Wesley?" she asked, voice the whisper of wind over wood. When her mouth opened, Jane noted that the inside of her mouth was as white as the outside.

The sergeant's answer was delivered in a dead-level monotone which shook Jane, though she took care not to show it. It was entirely at odds with his terrified body-language and expression. Still, he didn't know and he said so. The creature dropped him and turned to face the new arrivals.

"FUCKING FIRE!" the major ordered, clearing the line for them. With the sergeant on the ground, the moment to shoot came.

Jane noticed a moment too late the scattered and shattered bullets lying in the dirt around the creature. She fired the pistol she'd taken as her weapon and her fellows took that as a sign and opened fire as well. More than a hundred rounds impacted the creature and didn't accomplish anything. Jane carefully aimed her rounds at the creature's face and eyes. She saw one round impact the eye and accomplish nothing.

Higher caliber weapons, or anti-tank weapons might work, but they didn't have any in the house. "Cease fire and fall back," she commanded. The major looked at her with fury in his eyes, but she just continued, as she'd always intended. "Paulie, take your brothers, circle around and get the soldiers outta here," she commanded, retreating away from the approaching creature, the others falling back as well, scattering somewhat so that it couldn't pursue them all.

At least it seemed to be slow, so they backed away, keeping useless weapons between them and the approaching monster. Jane opened her mouth to shout another command. The words died as the creature raced forward and snatched her off her feet before she could even turn to flee more effectively. Her eyes fixed desperately on Luke, as she tried to order him to act, but the words lodged in her throat, caught by demon's clawed hands, one of which was easily holding her aloft by her throat. Air passed, but words would not.

"Where Wesley?" the demon asked again.

"Sunnydale," Jane did not recognize her voice as she betrayed him.

Luke finally read her eyes and her betrayal and acted, sliding the wooden box he carried open and lifting a heavy axe from it. Words in a language Jane did not recognize spilled from his lips and blood dripped from the axe's clean edge. The demon's head spun to face the chanting cousin. His guard had arrayed themselves between him and the demon, the very moment he'd started to speak, more to slow it down than because they imagined they could stop it.

The chant ended before the demon could do more than drop Jane and fog swirled into existence filling the air, then flowing towards Luke's, suddenly-still, suddenly-silent, form. An apparition formed out of the fog, taller even than the demon, surrounding Luke. Though the figure wasn't solid, the axe which it lifted from Luke's unresisting hands was, most definitely, solid.

"Enforcer," the demon whispered.

"Judge," the fog answered.

"Evil's executioner," the demon answered.

"I protect this place and those in it, by the Rite of Execution. I cannot permit you to act against them," the fog replied.

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce?" the demon (the Judge? The Executioner?) asked.

"I protect _this_ place and those in _it_ , by the Rite of Execution," the fog repeated.

"Unspoken. Understood," the demon said, then leapt straight up, wings spreading to catch the wind and it was gone.

A moment later, the fog was gone as well, refusing to bother to answer the questions of mere Humans.

"Fuck," Jane said, after a long minute of lying in the grass. Explaining this was going to suck.

 **XXXXX**

In the shadows of the estate, Mijana'd listened to the conversation. The damn Judge had run off, leaving her behind. Not that she knew of Mijana'd's presence. She used her fellow assassin as a distraction and handled those cases which the Judge wouldn't finish up because the target hadn't committed any offense punishable by death in her estimation.

Unfortunately, unlike the Judge, Mijana'd couldn't fly. Also unlike the Judge, she wasn't immune to bullets. Or being stabbed in the chest with a stake. There was a Slayer in Sunnydale, as well as a bunch of other demons. The Order of Taraka might not ever give up on a job, but that didn't mean she had to schlep across the country on her own dime to kill some schmuck of a Watcher. There were other targets, closer. After a long moment of thought, she shrugged and snuck back the way she'd come, disturbing neither grass, nor the wards that surrounded the house (though she had had to use the soldiers and the Judge to get in, getting out was much easier) and proceeded with getting on with her other business in town.

 **XXXXX**

"So we're fucking auditors now? Do we look like we work for the taxman?" Faith asked the major who'd met them in the secret (and excessively white) underground base.

"Well, he does," Major Ellis nodded in Wes's direction. "And he's the one we wanted. Not him and his harem."

Faith bristled and saw pair of soldiers flanking the major stiffen in response. She could hear the movement of the pair behind her as well, but Harmony and Wes could handle those. They carried some sort of souped up taser, but she was a hell of a lot faster than they were and they were way too close.

"And what has prompted your concern regarding this matter?" Wes asked, as if he was trying to calm things down.

The major ignored Faith's reaction, which did not assist in calming things down. "One of my squads got assigned to this dump. After about six months, I needed them back to help clean out a nest of demons. They were taking some 'vitamins' as ordered by the bitch running this place. I got a bit suspicious and asked a doc to take a look. They weren't vitamins, but stimulants, steroids, a whole passel of shit meant to make better soldiers and Goddamn the consequences. Well, that didn't fly with me. Unfortunately, the bitch running this place has connections high up in the DOD and I wasn't able to get any movement at all, until we stumbled over you. A conversation with the IG got me nowhere, until I had an independent expert they could use. I've got a couple others experts, financial and medical, but I needed a magical one. So you're here to get me through the door while I figure out what the fuck that bitch is doing to my boys."

"I see," Wes stepped forward and put a hand on Faith's shoulder. She automatically started to shrug it off, but before that, Wes spoke. "Given all that, you should be very grateful that I brought my own," his blank face suddenly transformed into a smile, "escorts."

Ellis smirked back at the three of them. "Just don't get in my way, and I'll be happy."

"Oh, I very much doubt that, Major Ellis," Wes said, eyes sad and certain.

"What?"

"I very much doubt you'll ever be happy." The major opened his mouth to respond. "And I _know_ you'll never be happy again if you press this matter with us." Wes and the major stared at each other for a long moment, then Wes continued, "Now, can I get to work?"

The major didn't flinch, but he was shaken as he turned on his heel and ordered them to follow. The soldiers led the way and Wes made to follow them, but Faith caught his arm. "Seriously, Wes? Escorts?"

Wes smiled at her. "The word has more than one meaning, Faith. And if he chooses to underestimate you? Well, we'll correct his understanding when it suits us, not before."

Faith grit her teeth, but agreed. "Then what the fuck was going on with that psychic act?"

Wes forced his lips flat, "Act?" A dark glare was her only response and the smile burst forth again. "Tell me, Faith, how many people in our line of work do you know who are actually happy?"

"Besides you and me?" Harmony interrupted their byplay.

Wes froze for a minute, then smiled at her. "Yes, besides us."

"None," Faith interjected, somewhat pointedly, partly to irritate them and partly to stop them from being lovey-dovey in front of her. It was nauseating. "Let's get the over with, then get out on the town. Or out on the Sunnydale at least."

Wes winced internally at that. The confrontation between Faith and Buffy was going to be…tricky. Especially since the soldiers had objected to him bringing guns with him. And with Harmony along. Luckily Buffy wasn't any better than Faith at sensing which people were Vampires (and there was a sentence he never would have thought before getting involved with Harmony), but they'd know she'd disappeared the night of the battle, along with him. They'd both be down on the rolls as dead or missing, which would raise all sorts of alarm bells. After all, there'd been Vampires all over the place. Anyone missing should be presumed vamped.

He rather wished he'd given them a call to warn them he was coming, but it hadn't occurred to him until they'd left and the plane, van and now underground base all included some sort of cell-phone jamming technology, which prevented him from calling them.

Either that, or his cell plan wasn't up to getting service in Sunnydale, or at fifty-thousand feet, or at minus a hundred feet. Given what tended to happen to people in any of those locations, that wasn't entirely surprising.

Finally they headed out, two soldiers falling in to lead the way, not that they'd really had any privacy back in that room, it was sure to be monitored, but he hadn't said anything which he was worried about them hearing. Despite the screams of his common sense, he was glad to have Faith and Harmony with him. Well, until he passed a cell containing a comatose vampire, occasionally twitching from some sort of neural shock. Or so he guessed given the fact that its skull was partially disassembled and he could see metal in the flesh of the brain.

Concern about Harmony raged in him as they moved from the fully-constructed (and painfully white) portions of the Initiative, through one of the operational, but not complete zones that was almost like a warehouse. She'd made her choice though and he had to respect it. But if anything happened to her, he'd burn this entire organization and everyone in it to ash.

 **Next Time on Dragged Away: A meeting goes awry and we end on a cliffhanger.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"I don't see what the big deal is. Don't you chop demons into pieces too? Or at least chop up the bodies, after I've chopped them up?" Faith asked, looking around the chamber of horrors with a casual glance.

Harmony was doing her nails, though she had picked up a medical clamp and used it to pinch her nose shut to avoid the horrifying stench, which the other two were ignoring (with varying degrees of success). It wouldn't have been necessary to redo her nails, if not for the fact that a couple of the soldiers had 'accidentally' tried to grab her, not understanding that she was with one of the auditors. It still might not have been necessary if not for the fact that after an unfortunate incident in Reno, Wes had spent quite a bit of time drilling her on how to react when people put their hands on her without her invitation. Despite the fact that she'd quite enjoyed his overprotective reaction, he wanted to be sure she could (and more importantly, _would_ ) defend herself.

Wes was holding a demon's forearm as he examined the neatly dissected elbow joint as he answered Faith's question. "Because there's no mystical reason to dissect a demon like this. If it was just the hand, well she'd be after a demonic Hand of Glory, reasonable, if foolish. Fingers, or blood also have their uses, but this is an entire forearm and this work," he pointed at the end of the arm, " isn't simply chopping. Someone's actually dissected this thing."

"So? Isn't that how you lot figure stuff out about demons? Dissect them? Like aliens in those old movies?"

"Not generally. But even so, there's no reason to be this careful," Wes's head tilted slightly as he considered the empty air for a moment.

Faith glared at him. Before she could do anything to take advantage of his sudden distraction, Harmony jump started the sentence, "Unless…"

"they were planning to use them for something. Maybe zombification?"

"Wouldn't you want them in one piece for that? Even if all these bits came to life, it wouldn't be dangerous, just funny," Faith pointed out.

"So…"

"Frankenstein?" she asked.

"Frankenstein's monster," he corrected her.

She resisted the urge to punch him, womanfully. And successfully. She then resisted the urge to ask if that was even possible, as it obviously was, or they wouldn't be discussing it. Probably.

"Why not just make zombies?" Harmony asked. "I mean, we've seen some pretty dumb people raise zombies. It's not like it's hard."

"Yeah, but you ripped those apart like they were nothing. Not very useful," Wes pointed out, actually pointing the forearm he was holding at her.

"Those were Human corpses. No offense, love, but Humans are wimps. They've got demons, why not make demon zombies?" Harmony asked.

"Or just put a bomb in them and make them do what you want while they're alive. They can do that, right?" Faith added.

"You saw what they did with neural implants, right? I think they can put a bomb in there too," Wes said.

"That's not an answer to why anyone would try to Frankenstein—" Wes opened his mouth. "—s Monster a bunch of demons together. I mean, what's the fucking point?" Faith asked.

Harmony pointed at the forearm Wes was still gesticulating with. "We're surrounded by demon bits, I think the point may be that the person who put them there is nuts. And I am allergic to nuts, Wes."

"Still?" Wesley asked, confused for a moment. "Wouldn't the Vamp—"

"Not what I meant! And put down that damn hand!" Harmony snapped.

Wes shamefacedly put down the arm. "Okay, enough asking each other questions, let's just ask the person who knows," he poked his head out of the abattoir and found the soldiers assigned to escort him. A quiet request had them agree to bring him to see the woman in charge of the facility.

Faith and Harmony fell in with him, Harmony tucking her fingernail polish back into the tiny pink clutch she was carrying. Losing the ability to see her own reflection had made applying makeup much trickier, but it did mean she had to carry a lot less stuff. Though she had added a switchblade to it, a gift from Wes before he understood what sort of gifts she actually wanted.

Their luggage were safely stowed back on the van. Wes had placed some sort of magical seal on them, then made dire warnings to the soldiers who were guarding them about the consequences of adding, removing, or even just touching their bags. Faith hadn't bothered to claim anything from her bag except the sheathed dagger she wore under her leather jacket, strapped to the studded belt which held up her jeans (she was filling back out, but slowly as the Slayer metabolism ate most of what she, well, ate).

They were brought into a conference room where, eventually, the director of the Initiative, one Dr. Margaret Walsh, deigned to join them, Wes rose automatically as a courtesy, facing her as an equal. She was escorted by two of her soldiers, holding the energy weapons which were able to stun Vampires, based on what he'd been told. Perhaps she thought that enough to equal the Vampire and the Slayer sitting beside him. They were undoubtedly wrong.

The few materials that had been provided had included her background, top of her class in medical school, with a Ph.D. in mythology and ancient languages. He'd noticed that they'd never been in the same place at the same time, except for while he'd been in Sunnydale and they certainly hadn't encountered one another then.

It was, therefore, somewhat surprising to discover that he recognized her. It was even more disconcerting to see the recognition in her eyes as well. They both paused for a moment, trying to determine if the other truly recognized them and recognized that they, in turn, were recognized. After a long moment, first she, then he relaxed. "Margaret Walsh, I'm in charge here," she said, crossing the room and extending a polite hand.

"Are you?" Wes asked, not releasing her hand.

Her eyes narrowed. "You may doubt my command because of this interference, but when it is done, I will still be here and still be in command."

"Very nice speech," he still didn't release his grip. Everyone else in the room was beginning to wind up, weapons and chairs twitching. "But I actually meant, are you Margaret Walsh?"

"Of course," she responded, eyes narrowing in a fully believable expression of confusion and concern.

"So, you wouldn't say you were Margaret St. Croix? Formerly a Watcher, until you were arrested, stripped of your rank and titles after it was discovered that you were attempting to create controllable versions of Frankenstein's Monster out of the corpses of demons and Humans? Sentenced to imprisonment and a lifetime of service until you escaped by improvising an explosive out of the few materials provided to you? You wouldn't say you were that Margaret, at all?" Wes asked innocently.

"Of course not, you lunatic, now let go of my hand!" she played the innocent extremely well. Her troops clearly believed her, one raising his weapon as the other slid forward to force Wes to release her.

His eyes narrowed for a moment and he almost released her, almost stepped back and reported in, almost trusted the system, the major, the government, something outside of himself to take care of the problem. But he'd learned that lesson, perhaps too well. If he couldn't trust the Watcher's Council then he definitely couldn't trust the US Army. She saw the decision in his eyes and acted first. Ducking his head managed to turn the blow that would have collapsed his throat into a powerful punch to the chin. There was more muscle on her than he'd expected and it staggered him, forcing his hand to release hers.

Faith and Harmony rose as soon as the woman moved. The advancing soldier blocked his fellow's line of sight to Faith, but he snapped off a shot at Harmony before she could do more than get out of her chair. The electricity sent her slumping backwards and convulsing as Faith grabbed the advancing soldier and threw him into his fellow.

Maggie Walsh nèe St. Croix fled, screaming about possessed auditors and demons while Wes was rising from where her blow had knocked him. He moved to where Harmony was still twitching, ignoring the fleeing woman, though Faith took off after her like a bat out of hell. The guards who raced to their leader's defense were numerous, well trained and pharmacologically enhanced. That bought her enough time to get across the hall and seal a large metal door behind her. It came down from the ceiling, blocking the entire corridor, a wall of grey metal amongst the solid white of the Initiative walls.

Wes helped Harmony to her feet and supported her as they walked out the door. They almost tripped over one of the bruised and unconscious soldiers who littered the hall, then did trip over one of the broken weapons which also (and more literally) littered the hall. By the time they'd gotten up, Faith was trying to pry the door up, without much success as it had been intended to contain demons.

"Well, that answers that question," Harmony said, rising more fluidly and pulling Wes to his feet after her.

"Which one?" Wes asked as he glanced around, hoping to spot a weapon which wasn't broken.

"Whether or not she's Margaret St. Croix, or Margaret Walsh," Harmony explained. "Was there another question?"

Faith let go of the handleless door, giving up on it with a grunt and a kick which sounded like someone had kicked a metal drum, but it did not give at all. "Well, there's the question of what she was up to," she put in after the reverberations had died down, as if she had not just lost her temper.

"Starting over. Doing the same thing with new backers," Wes agreed, because using nine words instead of one was what he did.

"You think they know about the Frankensteins?" Faith asked.

"Frankenstein's Monsters."

"For fuck's sake Wes, do these jarheads know about her plan or not? I need to know if I fight our way out or you get to try to talk us out of this," Faith snapped.

"Well, I doubt the guy who brought us here knows and I very much doubt that most of the 'jarheads' know about it. Or know about the truth of it," Wes said menacingly.

Faith realized he wanted her to ask about what 'the truth of it' meant, so she didn't. Harmony had no such compunction.

"The Human body parts need to be relatively fresh and relatively healthy. I suppose it's possible she's just using the casualties amongst the soldiers and the Demons, but given what she was doing when the Council caught up with her, I somehow doubt she's being so…limited in her choice of subjects."

"We didn't see any Human bits, though I suppose she wouldn't exactly leave them out for us to find…" Faith said.

"And unfortunately, they're necessary for her method to work. Otherwise the demon bits won't work together and you're back to zombies," Wes said.

"How do you know all this?"

"I watched her trial."

"Oh, she get's a trial, I get stuffed in a van," Faith muttered.

"You would have gotten a trial," Wes said, then tilted his head as if reconsidering. "Or so I thought at the time. In retrospect, I wonder if you would have survived to reach it, given the…consequences of imprisoning a Slayer and the…optics of executing one. No, I think you would have 'died trying to escape.' Unfortunate."

"Unfort—" Faith began, furious.

"Can we do this after we aren't standing in a hallway filled with soldiers Faith broke?" Harmony asked.

"We should go talk to some folks before she gets a chance to," Wes agreed.

"Yeah, wouldn't want the other rogue Watcher to turn the major's head," Faith muttered, but she fell in with Wes as he headed out into the identical hallways. He knew the way back to the entrance, but that wasn't where he needed to go.

"Harmony, can you smell the major?"

She paused and took a deep breath. Faith tried to find a joke about bloodhounds, or dogs in general, but Harmony took off on point before she could. With Wes in the middle, that left her on rearguard. Standing at Wes's back…

She could run now, she knew the way out as well as he did.

Go find Buffy, kill or die…

 **XXXXX**

"You lost fucking Frankenstein in this fucking house of monsters?"

Wes tilted his head a little as he considered how to respond to that question.

"Don't forget that he warned her that we were onto her," Faith put in cheerfully.

"Thank you, Faith," Wes said in a tone which conveyed 'shut up, Faith.'

"And then let her get away," Harmony added.

"Thank you, Harmony," he said somewhat more seriously.

"And how the fuck did that happen?" the major asked, less amused by the byplay than the participants, or his own guards who were struggling not to laugh.

"She punched me in the face," Wes explained and the guards lost their struggle, though they did manage to turn it into a coughing fit. "She's tougher than she looks," he added defensively, stroking his chin.

"She'd just about have to be," the major snapped.

"Anyway. The immediate question is where would she go?"

"Well, the locals are giving us some support, but a lot of them are playing dumb. Maybe because you beat the shit out of their friends."

"What about the plans for this place?"

"The ones I've got don't have anything labelled 'secret lab' or 'hiding place.' Darn those legend writers!" the major snapped.

"Darn?" Faith asked.

"Legend writers?" Harmony asked.

"Okay, well, this has been interesting. But I've lived up to my part of our bargain. So, I assume you'll live up to yours?"

"When this is resolved, I'll keep my end of the deal. But if this woman is a Watcher, like you say, then I want one on my side. My boys are turning this place upside down. When we find her, you'll come along and clean up this mess you've made. That's the cost of making messes."

Faith stepped forward, "So, what's the cost if I make a mess of your face?"

The major's guards tensed. The man had taken over Walsh's office, but he stood in front of her desk, without its comforting bulk between him and the pissed off Slayer. Despite his description of who'd done the beating, he'd seen the video footage and knew that she'd taken down half a dozen armed men, but he didn't flinch. "Besides sabotaging our alliance while Dr. Frankenstein's out there? Definitely means I won't keep the cops off your back and will set them on you."

Faith tensed slightly. "Only matters if you know where I am."

Wes spoke then, voice low, "I think you'd find it harder to set the Cleveland police on her than you imagine. Saving people's lives has a tendency to make a good impression."

"So does a team of FBI agents who won't leave," the major countered.

Wes's eyes narrowed. "Accidents happen to people who can't take a hint," the major opened his mouth to say respond, "and not-accidents happen to people who threaten _my_ people."

They stared at one another in silence.

Harmony broke the silence, "Love, I'm bored and she punched you in the face. I can hunt her down, if they can open the doors, then I can punch her in the face, okay?"

Wes turned away from the soldier and glanced down into Harmony's emerald eyes. "Sure, love. Just remember to pull your punch, okay, if you break her face they won't be able to question her."

She pouted at him, but agreed.

Faith still wanted to punch someone. Wes saw that and pointed out that she'd probably have an army of half-demon, half-human zombie things which needed fighting. A grin crossed her face and she agreed to accompany them. The major had the codes to open the doors and brought four of his 'boys' carrying automatic weapons, rather than the stun guns the Initiative troops were carrying.

The metal door slid open, letting them out of the pure white walled Initiative proper and into a bare concrete tunnel. The branching tunnels made a nasty maze, which Harmony led them through without any particular difficulty, tracking the renegade Watcher by scent. Unfortunately, Major Ellis wasn't actually stupid enough not to notice that the blonde was somehow tracking the target through concrete halls. He asked the obvious question and got a quelling one word answer, magic, from Wes. He also got a glare that said pursuit of that line of thought was going to end with someone dead.

The major let it go for now. When the rest of the problem was solved, he'd look deeper into these three. Or not, depending on how things worked out. Faith was backing Harmony up, to make sure she was the first one in, while the soldiers brought up the rear, leaving Wes safe in the middle.

"She's just up ahead, but there's other folks around," Harmony whispered as they came to a corner.

Faith laughed and rounded the corner, fists cocked, ready for anything. "Buffy!"

Almost anything.

 **Author's Note: Sorry for the short chapter. And the cliffhanger.**

 **Next time on Dragged Away: An even shorter chapter and an even crueler cliffhanger. No, seriously.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Both Slayers reacted instantly, attacking one another without hesitation. Harmony flashed around the corner, face changing as she moved to support Faith automatically. She completed the movement before Wes could utter a word. Lips twisted in fury, he stepped forward as well, pulling the soldiers along with a sharp gesture.

Buffy was standing with a large man, dressed like the soldiers of the Initiative, energy weapon up tracking Faith, but waiting for a clear shot as the two Slayers were currently intertwined in a fashion which would mean that a shot would take both Slayers out. They were moving too fast for Faith to even have time to draw her blade, let alone for a Human to take a shot. Harmony, game-face on rushed him, snatching the weapon from his hands and tossing it behind her. A blow to the face rocked her backwards, clearing a line of fire at the Initiative goon for the soldiers who flanked Wes.

They didn't take it, instead advancing, weapons pointed at the soldier, who fell back, lifting his hands in surrender. Wes followed up, watching as Faith and Buffy danced, Buffy had a stake in her hand, while Faith still hadn't managed to draw her blade. They were moving too fast, fighting too hard, too completely focused for banter.

If Wes spoke, he feared only one, if that, would heed him, and the other would strike them down. An embarrassingly long moment later, he remembered the overgrown taser the Initiative soldier had held. Taking them both out was probably the best he could hope for here, though Faith wouldn't be terribly happy about it.

A quick look around and he was moving towards it. He'd actually snatched it up when Harmony chose to intervene in the Slayer fight. His eyes widened and blunt denial, or command, he couldn't be sure which escaped his lips, too late to stop either her, or Buffy's blurred blow, lodging the stake in Harmony's heart.

 **Author's note: See. Told you it was another short chapter. Again. Sorry.**

 **Next time on Dragged Away: A reasonably sized chapter in which Wes goes ape-shit. Probably.**


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Faith froze for a moment as Harmony staggered back, pulling the stake from Buffy's hands as the other Slayer likewise froze in recognition of the former cheerleader. Faith's anger rose and she was rapidly pushing Buffy back, anger fueling her blows.

Wes had been angry before. The Watcher Academy had not been all laughter and praise, nor had his home life, and that was without considering his experiences in Sunnydale. He'd been beaten, kidnapped and tortured. Anger was something he usually avoided, because unlike irritation, indignation and calm, anger made him weak. It always had. Stole his words, sapped his will, made his hands shake and his eyes water.

This wasn't that. This was fury. He actually saw red, something he'd always assumed was just a figure of speech. His vision narrowed to a point as the rest of world turned to blood and madness and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce focused on that point, on the only thing in the universe that mattered as sound, smell, touch and taste all fell away. The universe contained two things, him and a woman who needed to die. There were things in his path, but they didn't matter, they weren't real. Only he and the breathing, fighting, living dead woman were real.

A step took Wes up right behind the two soldiers holding Buffy's comrade at rifle-point and his hand moved, pulling the pistol from the soldier's hip without drawing the man's attention, though Buffy's ally saw.

He slid around the fight, seeking an opening. The pistol tracked the blonde as all three parties moved and as he waited for Faith to clear his shot. Not because he cared if he shot the obstacle which was between him and the dead woman, but because if he missed his first shot, he might not get another. The obstacle moved. He pulled the trigger three times in quick succession, putting each shot where he wanted.

 **Author's Note: AGAIN?**

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 **Nah. Sorry, couldn't resist.**

The Initiative mook had escaped. Helped by the sudden discovery that Wes had stolen a gun from one guard, he managed to distract one and knock down the other by moving faster than should have been possible for a Human. A burst of fire from the distracted guard hit where the mook had been and the thug tackled Buffy even as Wes's shots slammed into his target. They went down, the mook on top. Faith stared at her enemy, smothered under a mountain of man-muscle in a certain amount of dismay.

Then she looked at Harmony, still standing there, a stake sticking out of her chest, staring at the thing with a certain amount of shock, but not collapsing into dust. Wes continued to circle in the sudden silence following the gunshots, moving into position to shoot the prone Slayer without wasting more rounds on her armored protector. He moved quickly, while she was stunned and pinned by unconscious mook.

Faith moved to Harmony. "Hold still, all right? It must have missed, but I need to get it out, just the way it went in, without spitting off any splinters, okay?"

Harmony nodded, not quite being up for speaking with a wooden stake sticking out of her chest.

Faith examined it closely, it had gone in at a slight rightward angle, but still should have hit the vampire's heart, but it clearly hadn't, what with there being a vampire and not a pile of dust.

A single jerk ripped the stake free and Harmony grunted in pain, but didn't collapse into dust, much to Faith's relief. When Wes wasn't at her side at the sound of her pain, Harmony finally spotted her lover moving into position for his shot, ignoring the shouted commands of the soldiers, their pointed rifles, blocking bodies and Major Ellis's cursing.

She moved. Fast.

She was between his gun and Buffy's head and met his blue eyes with her green ones. She'd seen Wes angry before. Not often, but it did happen. Usually his lips trembled and his eyes were wet, it was adorable, though she didn't tell him so. This wasn't that. His face was a bloodless ivory mask and his eyes…

She'd joked that his eyes were icy before now, when he was being particularly cold-blooded. Now she saw true ice, soulless and merciless. This was a man who would kill Buffy, then the soldiers, then the major, then empty this base of all life. After that…she didn't know what he would do. A hand swept forward to push her out of the line of fire. She flinched away, just as he had once, when he first saw her wearing her Vampire face.

That stopped his hand and brought something back into his eyes. Pain.

She flashed forward, wrapped her arms around his waist, offering and taking comfort. One of his arms engulfed her as well, while the other held the pistol straight out, unwilling to bring her anywhere close to its line of fire, but he breathed in the scent of her hair (and the fancy British floral shampoo which he hadn't found a way to tell her didn't really suit her) and slowly began to relax and let a soldier snatch the pistol from his loosening grip.

Buffy finally managed to focus enough to try to push two hundred pounds of beefcake and another thirty of armor and equipment off her. She could have done it too, if not for that meddling Faith, stepping forward and putting a booted foot on the, still unconscious, man (he must have bashed his head pretty hard going down). Her body-weight wouldn't have held down a Slayer, but the strength of her leg, plus the giant's body-weight was enough. Buffy would squirm free, eventually, but not before the soldiers, freed from pointing their weapons at Wes turned on their prisoners.

"Riley? Are you all right?" Buffy asked, shaking the beefcake slightly, then realized that revealing she knew and was cared about the soldier was probably not the smartest thing to do in front of Faith, a Vampire and their allies. Though the fact that he cared about her was pretty obvious, the reverse might not have been true. "Faith, what are you doing here?"

"Shouldn't the question be 'how are you alive after I gutted you'?" Faith asked sweetly. Before Buffy could answer Faith grabbed Wes by the collar and jerked him forward, accidentally dragging Harmony along as well. "My Watcher came to get me."

"Wesley? I thought you were dead!" her eyes flicked over to Wes's companion. "Harmony! I thought—I mean—you are dead." They flicked back to Wes. "Which means you're dead too,"

Wes's voice came out rough and hoarse. "No, I'm not. Neither are you, thanks to Harmony," he paused for a moment, "and Faith. Despite Ms. St. Croix's best efforts to get you killed," he turned away from Buffy. "Harmony, can you still track the renegade?"

Harmony stared at him for a moment, and he mouthed 'Maggie' where no one else could see him. "Of course. She's pretty close, the scent is strong."

Wes nodded, cleared his throat and turned back to the major, speaking in his usual voice. "Let's go. Faith, make sure you catch up, we're not waiting and if you aren't efficient, you'll miss out on fighting," there was an imperceptible pause, "Maggie's postulated army of half-demon, half-human zombies."

"What army of zombies?" Buffy asked, as Faith was attempting to figure out what 'postulated' meant.

"The army of zombies Ms. Walsh nee St. Croix is in the process of raising. Presumably somewhere nearby, as she didn't run away after using you as a delay and distraction. Which suggests she either doesn't understand what she's up against and thought you and…Riley, was it, could really stop us, or she's near to completion. I suggest we hurry," he said to Major Ellis, whose patience with byplay and strangers was reaching its end.

"Yes. Hurry," the major said through clenched teeth.

"You're really leaving me here, with her?" Buffy and Faith asked, almost simultaneously, as neither was willing to let the other interrupt them. The major was not thrilled by that, but the base was secure. If Faith did anything, then steps could be taken to punish her and he really didn't want any more of Maggie's people loose until the, perhaps imminent, threat was dealt with (and Faith hadn't said she was going to kill the other two, she might just have been left behind to guard them, or so he could tell anyone who asked).

"Obviously," Wes said as they moved out. They made it less than two hundred feet, and three turns, before they arrived at a large metal door that completely failed to open, despite the major's codes.

While the major was examining the control pad, the nearby walls and the ceiling and muttering something about explosives and not burying them all alive, Wes turned to go back to the pair of Slayers, leaving Harmony behind with a certain amount of difficulty and a large amount of reluctance. On both sides.

Meanwhile Faith had stepped back. If she'd wanted to kill Buffy while she was helpless, she'd have put an arrow through her, or taken one of the guns Trick had left behind and paid the other Slayer a visit. No, this wasn't about killing Buffy, it was about beating her.

Buffy managed to push the mountain of a man she was clearly, to Faith, sleeping with off her, and bring him around with a gentle, then a not so gentle poke. Faith almost commented on that, almost asked how long after Buffy had fileted her in an effort to save Angel's life, the two of them had split up, but she couldn't find a way to ask without sounding jealous. Riley's eyes opened, pupils looked good, but he was clearly punchy.

With that done, Buffy was on her feet in an instant. "What is going on?" she managed to ask before Wes arrived.

Faith didn't have an answer to that, but it still irritated her that Wes interrupted them. "Oh, good, you're both still alive. There's a door we can't get through, It could use some Slayer muscle."

"Yeah, yeah," Faith agreed, but she remained where she was standing, unwilling to turn her back on Buffy. Buffy likewise remained where she was standing, though that probably had more to do with the fact that she was standing over the fallen body of her…comrade? Lover? Wes couldn't tell and didn't really care at that moment. Under most circumstances he would have, both in order to determine how to use Riley against Buffy if it became necessary and to know if the Slayer was going to overreact to him shooting the soldier.

At this moment, however, if Buffy even looked at him wrong, he was going to kill her. Every time he looked in her direction, he saw her hand slamming a stake into Harmony's chest. So he turned and stalked away without a backwards glance. Faith followed him, circling wide around Buffy and walking backwards until she reached the intersection. After a moment of careful listening to footsteps getting further away, Buffy hefted the large man into her arms and carried him away.

She didn't want to follow Wes and Faith, but with Riley unconscious, she didn't know her way through this maze of tunnels. Besides, she wanted to see Maggie again and get an explanation for what in the world was going on.

The soldiers kept their distance as she carefully placed Riley down in what had been their midst before they scattered. When she withdrew, they closed back up, obedient to the major and guarded their comrade, as she'd expected. Though, also obedient to their major, they restrained the other man and made sure they could take him down if he tried anything again.

After a long moment of hesitation, Buffy and Faith moved to the door together and tried to slide it up. She did that less to be helpful and more because she wanted to talk to Maggie and because she was confident she could take them, but not all at once, the door would offer an opportunity to separate the groups.

A sidelong glance at Faith did not reassure her. The other Slayer was skinny, not merely slender, like she hadn't been eating properly, but she'd still held her own pretty well back there. Not well enough to keep Harmony from getting staked, but pretty well.

The other reason, of course, was that she knew she hadn't missed Harmony's heart and she knew her former classmate was a Vampire. So she needed to know why she wasn't dust and if other Vamps could do the same thing. It also raised questions about the effectiveness of other methods, not that decapitation without a weapon, or fire without any matches were really all that feasible.

The Slayers' efforts might have been more successful if they'd been fully focused on the door and not so focused on each other, but without handholds, the job was almost impossible. After a moment, Wes grimaced and waved them back, rolling up his sleeves and pulling off his gloves, after taking their position by the door.

"What are you going to do, Wes? Blow it down with a gust of hot air?" Buffy couldn't see what he was doing through his body, but her voice was sharp. Looking at the formerly ineffectual and irritating Watcher, she recalled his gun swinging in her direction and Riley unconscious on the ground, alive only because of his body armor. She automatically flicked her eyes over to her unconscious lover and noted, in passing, that Harmony had picked up a fire extinguisher somewhere. Not much of a weapon, but still more than she wanted to see in the hands of an apparently un-stakeable Vampire.

Wes's hands pressed against the metal. It didn't give. Then it did, not bending, but melting inwards as his hands burst into an ugly black flame and molten metal ran through his fingers. Instantly the flames went out and he was stepping back, flicking the metal off before it could penetrate the flame and Harmony was stepping forward, spraying him, the door and most especially his hands down with the white foam and chemicals.

Wes stepped back coughing and waving hands which were burnt to a crisp. The metal fell from his fingers and he wiggled them at her. After a bit more, completely unnecessary spraying down of Wes, she focused the remaining contents of the fire extinguisher on the door. When it finally clicked empty, she tossed it aside and stepped forward, checking to make sure there wasn't any harm done to her partner.

There wasn't.

She dropped a kiss on his cheek and whispered an obscene comment in his ear. Buffy couldn't hear all of it, but it was something about her spraying him down, for a change. Combined with the kiss, it was enough to wig her right out. Wes and Harmony would always have been a weird pair. Magic-Wes and Vampire-Harmony was a terrifying image. A terrifying image in front of her right now, as Wes's hands were wrapped around Harmony's waist.

"What was the point of that, besides letting Harmony spray you down with white stuff?" Faith asked, with a smirk.

Wes released Harmony slowly and the Vampire stepped back, realizing with distress that her clothing was getting coated with the same foam she'd sprayed everywhere and she began to try to clean off her clothing. "Handholds provide leverage," he explained, pointing at the melted holes in the door.

"Ah," Faith moved and managed to get the door about six inches off the ground. When Buffy joined her they managed to get the door up high enough for the others to duck through (after looking under the door to make sure no one was standing right on the other side to stab them as they got it up).

Wes stepped forward, "You know, an idiot might think there was something symbolic in the fact that it took both of you to get that done."

Harmony instantly abandoned her attempt at cleanup when she saw Wes was aiming to go through the door first and shouldered past him. He followed her under the door and into an open lab area delightfully devoid of demon-human hybrid zombies. Though not so delightfully full of demon and human corpses in various stages of decomposition and deconstruction.

Harmony moved fast, despite the stench of corpses, as the room, though large wasn't large enough to hide a renegade Watcher standing over a massive and completely constructed half-demon, half-human, with extra cyborg bits, including a machine-gun arm.

Green and white skin were fused together by science and sorcery, and the ex-Watcher was sliding something into its chest when Harmony leapt over the corpse and tackled her to the ground, a second too late to prevent it from sliding in.

Wes rushed forward and managed to get one bare hand against its chest and began to chant, low and urgent, eyes open and staring with panic as the arm ending in a rotary cannon rose towards him and a blade burst from its other, more demonic arm. Then those arms froze as Wes's chant bound them both.

Margaret managed to get a foot up and into Harmony's midsection as the Vampire tackled her and guided the younger woman into the concrete wall behind them with bone-cracking force. Falling face first onto the concrete floor didn't help with her focus either. A stake snapped into Margaret's hand and plunged towards Harmony's chest, but the Vampire's reflexes snapped a blocking arm up. The stake slammed between the two bones of her forearm.

It was trapped there. The ex-Watcher cursed silently and broke away, as Harmony's pain and confusion bought Margaret a moment to break free and turn to face Wes, who kept up his chant, despite the approach of the weaponless ex-Watcher. After a moment, he got one hand free of the body and let it burst into flames, but kept up his chant. If he stopped for a moment, the beast would break free.

Trying to block the blows while pinned in place and with only one free hand wasn't easy, but he managed to turn the kick to the balls into one to the hip and prevent two blows to the stomach and a follow up to the blow to the throat, though she did manage to land a powerful blow to his nose, which rocked him backwards, sending blood dripping down his lips but didn't stop the chant, or break his grip.

The follow-up blow would have finished it, but Faith had abandoned the door and tackled the ex-Watcher to the ground. Buffy must have likewise abandoned the door, because she was suddenly there and staring at the creature before her with wide eyes.

The door had slammed down towards Faith's shoulder without Buffy there, but the Slayer managed to duck away and still make it inside before the door slammed shut. Major Ellis and his men were not pleased to be left outside, though they'd been more than willing to let a Vampire and a lunatic take point and any ambushes.

Faith joined Buffy at the frozen monster, after giving Margaret a painful kick to the stomach to keep her down and moved to grab the monster's arm. Buffy caught her arm in turn. Faith almost slugged her, but managed to only give her a horribly threatening look. Buffy let go and stepped back out of Faith's space. "What do you think happens to Wesley if you rip that thing apart while he's attached to it?" Buffy asked.

"You think I don't know what my own Watcher is capable of? Or do you just think I'm trying to kill him?" Faith asked challengingly.

Before they could either start to physically fight, or realize that they could, in fact just ask Wes (he wasn't able to speak anything but the chant, but he could obviously move, otherwise Margaret's attacks would have done more than bloody his nose) Harmony got up off the floor, grabbed the monster by its still head, planted a foot on a single, massively muscled shoulder and pulled. Hard.

It took her three tries to succeed, while the Slayers argued.

The sound made as the head and reinforced spinal column ripped free of demon and human flesh was difficult to describe. Nauseating was a pretty good descriptor. Distracting was also accurate and rather more useful, as it did stop the fight when Harmony fell over backwards from the sudden loss of resistance. That did cause her to mostly avoid the spray of blood and other fluids from the decapitation (though, alas, not avoiding the fluids leaking from the head clutched in manicured hands), though it meant that her ass, the one part of her that hadn't been bruised so far no longer had that distinction.

Wes released his grip and stepped back, neither decapitated nor effected by Harmony's intervention. "You know," his voice was mild, "if you wanted to know whether or not killing the monster would cause me problems, you could have asked me, or Harmony. There was no need for any of that nonsense." Faith flushed and looked away, while Buffy smirked. "Honestly, Buffy, I'd have thought Giles had taught you better than to start a fight like that."

Faith's head rose and she grinned broadly at the shocked blonde Slayer. Wes stepped away to help Harmony to her feet, turning his back on the, no longer squabbling, Slayers.

"Well, at least I didn't just rush in, unlike some people! For all I knew, it could have killed you. Sorry for trying to keep you _alive_ ," Buffy defended herself, looking at Faith and then Harmony, who had tossed the head aside and was attempting to clean off her clothes, with a notable lack of success. Mostly she was just spreading the various fluids around.

Harmony's head twitched up at the suggestion that she might have endangered her cuddlebunny. "I knew it wouldn't hurt him. We did the same thing with that," she glanced at Wes, mouthing 'statue monster thingy' at him.

"Gargoyle," Wes glossed as he knelt by the no-longer-stunned, but not-yet-resistant Margaret and pulled off her lab coat intending to use it as a towel.

"Right, gargoyle in Las Vegas. Stupid thing tried to wake up, but Wes held it in place while I went and got a sledgehammer and smashed it to pieces. That'll teach stupid wizards," Wes mouthed 'warlock' to himself, but let it go, "to try to cheat my man at poker!"

"And to not try to kill us when they fail," Wes added as he wrapped the coat around Harmony, rather than trying to clean off the fluids after a surreptitious test showed how ineffective that would be. A kiss dropped on a clean section of her cheek helped calm her down, somewhat.

Ordinarily Wes wouldn't have turned his back on an enemy as he did to 'Maggie Walsh,' but with Faith staring at them, he was as safe as could be, probably. And besides, if she'd had a weapon, she'd have used it on him already.

The doors they'd entered through opened again, though Wes couldn't for the life of him tell how Major Ellis had managed that, though it was obvious he hadn't used explosives. The man strode in, surrounded by a _lot_ more guards than the four he'd brought along originally and looked around the room in a combination of disgust and victory. "Well, well, well, Ms. Walsh, regardless of what your name is, or what crimes you may or may not have committed against British politeness and secret societies, this is more than enough to get your ass locked up for the rest of your life."

The major's humor dropped away as he recognized a tattoo on one of the partially disassembled Human corpses on the other tables in the room. He didn't know the man wearing it, not really, but he knew where he'd served. Only iron discipline kept him from just shooting the bitch and being done with this whole nightmare factory.

The woman rose, ignored Major Ellis with an effort of will, and spoke instead to Wes. "You may think you've won, but you haven't. I'll get out, because the powers that be, the people who actually see the big picture understand that this," she waved at her laboratory, "this is how we'll win and I'm needed for that. But don't worry, I'm not sadistic. Though I will make sure they kill you and your little friends and bring me your bodies for experimentation, it will be as quick and clean as I, or whomever I send, can manage." She smiled beatifically at him. "Though, given that you've got a Slayer on your side, that may not be all that clean, or quick. You know how hard they are to kill," her smile turned into a cruel grin, "or maybe you don't. Don't worry, I'll make _sure_ you find out."

Faith started forward, murder in her eyes and clenched fists, but Wes interposed himself as the guards tensed. The Slayer slowed, then stopped after seeing the look in his eyes. Wes turned to Margaret, eyes dead. Wes slid a tiny knife out of his belt-buckle. The knife rose to his own face as he rubbed his, still bleeding, nose. The steel contrasted sharply with his pale skin, but mimicked the hardness of his eyes.

"Mr. Pryce, I need to take her in alive," Major Ellis's voice was concerned, though not panicked and a hand signal had his troops spreading out to find cover and ensure a rush couldn't bowl them all over.

Wes ignored him and stepped forward quickly, catching Maggie by her short hair, pulling her head back sharply. The blade came to rest on her throat. "Ms. Walsh, you're very dangerous. I am not dangerous. I am deadly. If you ever take any action against me or mine, you will die. It may not be at my hand, but it will be by my will. As a courtesy, former Watcher to former Watcher, I suggest you stay in whatever hole they drop you in," the knife drew a thin line across her throat, enough to draw blood, but not enough to sever any of the blood vessels, "understand?"

Her green eyes met his levelly, despite the water brought there by the hand twisted in her hair. "I hear your words, Wyndham-Price," she said.

After a long moment he released her and stepped back. "When you understand them, you may be of some use," he said, turning on his heel and leaving her there without a second look. "She's all yours," he said to the major sardonically as he stalked out of the lab. Harmony was dogging his heels and after a moment's hesitation, so did Faith. After a longer moment, so did Buffy, though she stopped to help her slowly recovering boytoy to his feet and pull him along, which was a good thing, as none of the rest of them knew the way out of that maze of tunnels. And they all wanted to be out of those tunnels.

In the instant Wes was briefly alone with Harmony, he carefully wrapped the hairs he'd pulled from Margaret's head in his handkerchief, along with the blade, stained with his blood, and her blood and dropped the whole disgusting package into his pocket. Now they were done with the Initiative.

 **Next time on Dragged Away: Whoops! Now they're in Sunnydale proper. And people have questions. Other people do have answers, but it's not at all clear that they want to share them.**

 **I'm on leave next week, to recover from last month, which has been hellish. Updates will resume September 16.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Wes had regretted many things in his life. Letting Faith drive now topped the list. When they pulled safely into the hotel parking garage, he was convinced that the secret government agency that procured the van must have either installed some sort of magic shielding on it, or everyone around them was able to mystically sense the consequences of running into them, regardless of who was actually at fault.

Still, they arrived, alive, if with their nerves frayed, and had a few moments on their own before they reached the front desk, which, like the shaded parking garage was entirely shielded from the sun (Cavendish had called to check on the pretense that he was married to an albino). A few words with the desk clerk and they were safely ensconced in the very comfortable hotel room on their own, in private (they'd technically been in private during the van trip, but Wes and Harmony hadn't been able to say much, because they were clinging to one another, and the van, in terror).

Harmony took advantage of this privacy to ask where Faith had learned to drive. The fact that she hadn't ever formally learned and had nothing so pedestrian as a driver's license, did not reassure her. Faith's good mood at discovering she had her own room and that hotel was _very_ nice did not counteract her irritation about other things.

"Okay, we need to—" Wes began.

"Explain how the fuck Harmony is still alive—kicking—whatever," Faith corrected herself.

"Obviously Buffy—" Wes began, eyes narrowed in a pantomime of concern for Faith's sanity.

"Wes found a magic artifact which protects me," Harmony interjected before Wes could complete the lie. He had her best interests at heart, but Harmony knew people a lot better than he did and 'it was for the greater good' was not an argument that was going to hold water with Faith.

"In the batch of stuff we— _I_ stole from those ex-Watcher assholes?" Faith asked, voice dropping dangerously.

"Yes," Wes admitted, without either shame, or braggadocio.

"You put me in danger to find a toy for your girlfriend and didn't even tell me about it?" Faith's voice was rising in fury.

"No," Wes's voice retained its even tone.

Faith spoke through clenched teeth, "Then what did you do?"

"I bought the artifact out of the loot we'd acquired. I was unaware it was there," he paused for a moment, then continued, "though I did know they were advertising that they had something which Vampires would want to purchase. Acquiring it was a tertiary objective."

"Tertiary?" Harmony asked, though her eyes didn't leave the tense Slayer.

"Third-order."

"And what were the other objectives?" Faith asked.

"Primarily, acquiring additional resources, driving out the Guild and searching for the book the Archmage was interested in. Secondarily, prevent the Guild from identifying Faith and ensure they don't bring a significant population of Vampires back to Cleveland. The only other tertiary objective is the same as most operations recently, namely increase our ability to work efficiently with Faith."

"What's this magic bullshit that lets Harmony survive a stake to the heat?" Faith interjected before they could continue their banter.

"I'm not going to tell you that. And Harmony can't tell you that, because she doesn't know it."

"I'm good enough to help you steal the bullshit, but not good enough to know what it is _that I helped you steal?"_ Faith asked, temperature rising.

"It's not a matter of good, or bad, trust or distrust. I am not a storybook character, I'm under no obligation to explain how things work so the audience will understand. We both know that information can be taken right out of your head without you, or Harmony, or myself even being aware of it. If it was possible I would take that knowledge from myself."

Faith glared at him, but didn't actually have a response to that, so she changed the subject. "And where was this protectiveness when the crazy Frankenstein lady was threatening to kill us?"

"Are you sure you want an answer to that question?" Wes asked, voice bleak.

His tone almost gave her pause, but she was committed now. "Obviously, princess."

"Very well. I was precisely as protective as I needed to be. I prevented you from harming her in front of Buffy and other witnesses—"

"And so left a crazy person, with a grudge, _who's escaped from prison before_ , alive and kicking. Probably kicking us, later," Faith interrupted him.

"She'll be dead by dawn tomorrow, Faith," Wes said, bluntly.

"And—" Faith caught herself. "What?"

"I have her hair and blood, I can kill her. She has my blood inside her body, I can find her anywhere and penetrate any mystical defense she can raise. Everyone heard me say that _if she broke out_ I'd kill her, so obviously I was prepared to let them take her away. She'll suffer an unfortunate brain hemm—burst blood vessel in her brain and die in her sleep. Do you have any other questions for me, Faith?" Wes asked.

Silence was her only answer to that.

"So, can we get out of here now?" Harmony asked, ending the horribly awkward silence. "I really want to show you off to everyone who said I'd never get a good man, but _nothing_ good ever happens here. And I'd like to get out of here before everything goes horribly wrong."

"I don't know, Faith, can _we_ get out of here? Or do we have more to do here?"

Muscles in Faith's jaw jumped and she spoke through clenched teeth, "I don't. As you've shown, I _can't_ know whether you are, I guess you have to decide that."

Wes's eyes flicked to Harmony, who shrugged, sliding close to him, "What do we need to do?" he asked, wrapping arms around Harmony.

"Besides check for the book the Archmage wants? You remember, the excuse we had for coming here?" Faith reminded him.

Wes nodded slightly, relaxing further against the Vampire who was wrapped around him.

"And I need to finish things with Buffy. One way, or another."

Wes tensed right back up, but nodded again, pleased that she was at least admitting the possibility of more than one solution. And she hadn't actually pulled her knife on Buffy in their previous fight…

"All right, fine," Wes began to dig his gear out of his baggage, including a pistol in a shoulder holster, a second gun sliding into a holster in the small of his back, a knife and a cell phone which was blinking with approximately a thousand voicemails and text messages. A quick glance at the text messages had Wes frowning for a moment.

"Hmmm…anyone remember what giant winged ivory golem things are?" he asked after a moment.

Unsurprisingly they did not. "Why do you ask?" Harmony asked.

"As best I can decode Jane's increasingly indecipherable messages, such a creature attacked the house while we were gone. No one was hurt, but it got our location out of Jane and is on its way here. Apparently," he flicked a knife-like glance up at Faith, "it has some sort of power to force people to tell the truth, even if they don't want to."

Faith froze for a moment, trying to decide whether to chide Wes for lying to justify his earlier lies, or joke/state that she would pay good money to see that power used on the British Bitch.

"Eesh. And it's a giant ivory statute?"

"Apparently a giant female ivory _statue_ ," Wes's slight emphasis sought to correct Harmony without insulting her. "I should talk with Giles and see if he's got any ideas. Most of my books are back in Cleveland and after the whole electronic ghost thing, I'm not digitizing anymore of them," he justified his lack of local resources, despite the fact that no one had challenged him on that point.

"Are we going to keep driving—NOT YOU, FAITH—around in a 'borrowed' government van?" Harmony asked.

"Unless you're looking to go for a walk in the sun, or know where to rent another windowless vehicle, yes. And I can totally—" Faith winced, but didn't correct herself, hoping the valley-girlism would escape notice, "drive the van."

"Yes, we just had a demonstration of that ability," Wes agreed. "And it is perhaps worth considering how painful that trip must have been, given that I am willing to leave you and Harmony together in the back, where I can't intervene if you decide to try to kill one another, rather than have you drive us back."

Faith flounced (she would not have referred to it as flounced, but it was, indeed, a flounce) over to a chair and sat down heavily, arms crossed in what might have been referred to as a pre-tantrum mood, if not for the fact that she was a grown woman and could (and would) break a man in half if he referred to anything she did as a tantrum.

"I don't think I was that bad," she muttered to herself.

Harmony frowned. "Sweetie, you're absolutely awesome in a hundred ways, but I'd rather get stabbed in the heart again, rather than let you drive me anywhere again."

Wes was flicking through his phone, finding Giles's address and phone number (kindly provided by the PI he had watching the man). A quick conversation on the phone and he'd confirmed the other ex-Watcher was home and was available.

Harmony and Faith had spent the time bickering about what things were worse, with Harmony maintaining that whatever Faith came up with was, in fact, not as bad as being driven someplace by Faith.

"Do you want to come with me to see Giles?" he asked the room at large.

"It's a bit bright outside for me," Harmony pointed out.

"And if Buffy knows you're a Vampire, then so does Giles," Faith argued.

"And? Wes says they hung around with a Vampire all the time," Harmony argued, naturally taking the opposite side of the argument from Faith, even though she didn't particularly want to go to a meeting which was going to consist of Wes talking all British (hot) Geek with Giles, who would be talking all British (stuffy) Librarian.

"Hypocrisy has never troubled them," Wes pointed out, before Faith could.

"And Angel had a soul," Faith pointed out, because she chose to be contrary.

"If Giles gives us any trouble, we'll just hit him on the head and ransack the place, just like everyone else always does," Wes argued. "You can come if you want to, but you certainly don't have to."

They went about three rounds like that, each attempting to make sure the other felt wanted, but not pressured, before Faith lost her temper and decided Wes was going and Harmony was staying, as was Faith herself.

"We'll have some girl talk," she said, with a wicked smirk and a glare at Wes that suggested payback for leaving her out of the information loop.

Wes shrugged, "If you're sure," he said to Harmony.

"Sure. It'll be fun," Harmony's cheerfulness was genuine, which was somewhat disconcerting to Faith, who'd intended sarcasm, but had a horrible vision of her future as involving pink clothes and hair products. Maybe it wasn't too late to catch up to Wes, but the ex-Watcher had made his escape.

She could just say no, or punch Harmony, or do any number of things. The problem was, it would be like kicking a puppy. A very stupid puppy. Not one of the one's that nipped at your heels and deserved to be kicked, no this was a very nice and very stupid puppy, who wanted to do 'girl stuff' and hadn't had an opportunity in _months_.

Besides she needed to talk to the Vampire and getting her in a good mood first might be smart.

 **XXXXX**

It was pure luck that Giles had not been informed about Wes's 'encounter' with Buffy, as the ex-Watcher would not have found Wes's attempted murder particularly amusing. Indeed, he wouldn't have let him through the door if that was the case. But Buffy was with her boyfriend, who was attempting to deal with the fact that his boss had turned out to be a crazy evil woman (that is, a crazy woman, an evil woman _and_ a crazily-evil woman) and the fact that he'd gotten shot three times, leaving Buffy without a chance to communicate with her former Watcher.

The two former Watchers dug into the research project with a will. Indeed, Giles jumped at the project in a manner which was a bit disturbing, as he was absurdly eager to do something. Still, it was actually nice to do some research instead of having to handle the problems of leadership.

"Well, f—" Wes glanced at Giles, "darn," he passed over the book he'd been reading which had produced near profanity.

The older man flipped through the pages. "Ah, right. Still, it shouldn't be a problem, the Watchers have a treaty with the Judges and their underlings. They're ridiculously aggressive, but they hold to their treaties."

The Judges had historically been one of the major defenders of humanity, travelling the world with their Court, Bailiff, Prosecutor and Defender, trying those who committed crimes against Humans. However, they didn't reproduce and though they didn't die of old age and were extremely tough, their numbers had still dwindled over the millennia and now they were extremely rare.

"Two problems with that, first, this Judge is apparently without her Court, which probably makes her unstable."

"If she was that bad, she'd have smashed your people, not just demanded to know where you were."

"Maybe. The other problem is that the treaty won't protect me."

"What are you talking about? The Council may have fired you and I may be retired, but…" Giles's voice trailed off. "Really?"

"Really."

"They struck your name from the rolls? That's not standard for someone whose been fired. I can't remember the last time they actually struck someone's name from the rolls. I know they didn't strike Gwendolyn Post's name from the rolls, or mine. It's not something we really do anymore."

"What can I say? My family are strict traditionalists."

"Doesn't striking someone from the rolls take a full vote of the Council?"

"Yes."

"And carrying out the Ritual of Ostracism?"

"Yes."

"And—"

"The Denigration, the Casting Out and Declaration of Out-Law? Yes, indeed. It took them until last week to complete all of the nonsense that is the result of a ten thousand year old secret society which has completely failed to adapt to the modern world."

"That seems like a lot of work."

"Like I said, _strict_ traditionalists."

"Well, don't worry about it. They didn't bother to strike me from the rolls, I can declare you protected under the treaty," he flicked through the pages, "under article 17. There we go. No problem at all."

"If you'll make the declaration?"

"Yes, yes," Giles read the old words from the book and just like that, Wes was under the protection of the Watcher's Council. There was something hilarious about that.

"So," the older man leaned back, pouring himself a second cup of the tea they shared during their researches. "What are you doing back in Sunnydale, besides raiding my library?"

Wes had dodged the question first time around, but he'd come into Giles's house without an explicit invitation, from sunlight and without setting off any of the mystic alarms the other Watcher had set, so he could be pretty sure Wes was, in fact, Wes (though the gloves were a bit worrisome). With research done and him protected in a manner which took a full vote of the Council to withdraw, Wes had very little reason to lie.

He had very little reason to tell the truth, either. But better not to burn this bridge if he could avoid it.

"This secret government group leaned on me to do some work for them. I'm a little irritated about that, seeing as you were in town and they clearly know about Buffy, given I ran into her and a new…friend in their base. Is there some reason I had to come all the way across the country, when you could have gotten there in a ten minute drive?"

"I don't think they know about me. Buffy has been…expanding her network of associates without reference to me as she moves onto college." Giles met Wes's eyes for a moment, flushed slightly and took off his glasses to clean them. "Anyway, what happened to your glasses?"

"I got contacts for when I had to fight," Wes answered briefly, then continued on, "You mean she's working with the government spooks, but not with her own Watcher? Seriously?"

Giles flushed brighter at that. "I'm trying not to stunt her growth, I've taught her everything I can and need to give her some room."

"Okay, fine, that even makes some sense, but why aren't you hooking whatever you're doing up with the government folks?"

Giles polished his glasses again.

"Because you aren't doing anything? Seriously? Giles! You know how to put together resources, contacts and allies. Why in the world aren't you building a more serious network? Even if you want to get out of Buffy's way, there's a whole world out there that you have the skills and the knowledge to help. Get off your ass and back in the fight!"

The knock on the door, followed instantly by it opening, saved the older man from answering that question, to his great relief. "Giles! You'll never believe who's in town," Willow caroled from the door, joining them in Giles's sitting room.

"Wes?" Giles offered.

"I think he managed to guess," Wes agreed, drily to the stunned and staring redhead.

"You shot Riley!" Willow said, jumping straight to the point.

"Yes. Several times. Fortunately he was wearing body armor," Wes admitted nonchalantly, sliding backwards a step to ensure he would have time to draw a pistol even if one or another of the others chose to rush him. He intended to and did distract Willow from explaining that he'd shot Riley in an effort to shoot Buffy, which Giles would not take nearly so well (assuming correctly as it turned out, that Buffy had told her best friend how Riley ended up getting shot).

"WHAT?" Giles snapped.

"He attacked my people in mistaken defense of Margaret St. Croix, who he was under the impression was Margaret Walsh, formerly leader of the Initiative, currently under arrest for the same nonsense which got her kicked out of the Watchers. So I shot him." Wes explained with the calm of a man who was certain he was the only one in the room with a gun. And told what was the truth, from a certain point of view.

"Oh. Margaret Walsh is Margaret St. Croix?" Giles blinked, surprised.

"Yes."

"What he's not telling you is that 'his people' are Faith and Vampire Harmony," Willow exclaimed.

"Indeed," Wes agreed.

"Why—Wait, who is Harmony?"

"Blonde cheerleader, one of the Cordettes, originally," Willow glossed. "And now a Vampire, rather more importantly."

"Oh, right," Giles was reminded of Wes's misdirection, "Why didn't you tell me?" Giles asked.

"Because I didn't want you to know."

"More precisely," Giles's voice dropped and Wes caught a glimpse of the very dangerous man Giles could be, if he chose to be.

"Fighting about it seemed a thoroughly counterproductive use of everyone's time as neither of us is likely to change position."

"About you working with a pair of murderers? No, I doubt we will," Willow said, with an impressive amount of zest for a woman he'd remembered as fairly retiring.

"As you're dating a murderer, I rather doubt that's the distinguishing characteristic," Wes counterattacked instantly.

"Oz never murdered anyone!" Basic honesty made her continue, "As a person. And," Willow glanced down, "we're not together anymore."

"I'm sorry, but that Mr. Osbourne's lycanthropy is not what I was referring to. You may recall that your team had managed to seize the Box of Gavrok and we were prepared to destroy it. Mr. Osbourne prevented us from doing so in order to save your life. And so the Mayor Ascended. And so Harmony was turned into a Vampire, I was kidnapped and tortured and nineteen other students died." Wes let the silence stretch for a moment, but before Giles could jump in to protect the stunned woman, he continued. "Of course, it worked out quite well for me, so I can't actually complain too much." As the tension began to fade, he continued again, "I don't think the families of the rest of the dead could say as much."

"There's a difference between unforeseen consequences and desired results and you know that, Wesley," Giles interjected protectively.

"An interesting argument, given that the one killing of a Human we have any evidence Faith committed was clearly accidental."

"Which is one reason I didn't want you to involve the Council," Giles countered.

Wes smiled slightly. "Ah, yes, you are quite correct. I was an arrogant, naïve child, while you, correctly, didn't want to involve the Council. Now I agree with you. Congratulations."

"Faith's done a lot more than just kill one guy by accident and we both know it!" Willow snapped, stepping forward, fury writ on her face. "Like kidnapping me!"

"True. And here you are, alive and well."

"So, it's all just okay?"

"It's all over, so further debate is not useful."

"Faith is—" Willow pushed.

"Not your concern," Wes interrupted her.

"And the Vampire?" Giles asked, looking to divert Willow before she tried something which would provoke an unfortunate reaction from this version of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.

"As she was turned at Graduation, just before I absconded with Faith, I have clearly kept both of them from being any real trouble for the last eight months."

"Or I just haven't heard about it, it's a big world and you do have a Judge after you," Giles pointed out.

"Fair point. Is there anything I could say which would convince you?"

"You might surrender."

"No. That would provoke bad reactions from Faith and Harmony alike. And, I admit, I am _not_ impressed by the competence you and yours have displayed in the matter of the Initiative. I would be concerned you might either kill me, or turn me over to Dr. Frankenstein, entirely through incompetence."

Giles flushed at that, as did Willow, who stepped forward, Wes slid around her, hand sliding to the weapon in the small of his back. Giles caught the movement, even if Willow didn't and caught her, pulling her back. "He shot Mr. Finn. With a gun?"

"Obviously with a…" Willow's voice trailed off as she shot a glance back at Wes and noted the hidden hand. She stepped back, hands rising.

"Thank you for your assistance, Giles. If there's anything I can do to repay the favor, ask."

"And it will be done?" Giles offered as completion of the sentence.

"Not necessarily, but I'll give it due consideration, in light of the debt I owe you."

"Well, well, well, you have grown up, haven't you? Accepting responsibility for the duty of a Watcher."

"Yes. I trust you'll take it back up, now that you've been reminded it isn't just to the Slayer, but to the world at large?"

"Run along, Wesley, I will do what is appropriate for me to do," Giles's voice was bleak and threatening and despite everything Wes found himself wanting to shrink from it. He didn't, but he _really_ wanted to. He managed to leave, rather than flee, but it was a close-run thing.

 **Author's Note: Since Wes is, in fact, a storybook character, I will explain the whole Harmony surviving thing. Just like in canon, Spike went looking for the Gem of Amara, but this time Harmony wasn't there, he didn't notice the tiny ring which was actually the Gem. After killing everyone involved in fury, he sold the whole set of loot, which was purchased by the Guild and stolen by Faith, at Wes's request. Since Harmony wasn't there to blunder around getting their attention, they never even knew Spike was in town.**

 **The Gem of Amara was what Wes planted inside Harmony back in Chapter 9, as he surely wasn't going to be leaving it around where someone could chop it off with an axe, or rip it off with a hand. Fortunately, Harmony's generally flashy style means that there's no shortage of things which might be mystical (if tacky) objects for other people to target, failing to understand that the gem is hidden inside her.**

 **In a behind the scenes note: Spike's treatment of Harmony and, even more, her reactions to it are one of the major inspirations of this fic. Would Harmony have eventually proven herself faithless (no pun intended) if her first post-vamping partner wasn't an utter bastard (at least to her)?**

 **Next time on Dragged Away, they actually manage to do some investigating, instead of being constantly side tracked. You know, after they side track themselves.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Harmony smiled down at the properly made-up Faith, whose hair was finally in curls, not the straight, ridiculous frame to her face. She considered trying again to get Faith to accept one of Harmony's clutches as a loan, to provide a brighter spot of color to the dark-clothed Slayer's wardrobe, even if she wouldn't expect pink. The muscle jumping in Faith's jaw said no. She'd had her fun, for far longer than she'd expected.

"All right, what do you want?" Harmony asked.

"Huh?"

"Come on, it's not like you're the first person to be nice to me because you want something. I assume you don't want to fuck, so ask away."

"I actually…okay…so, thank you. For trying to help me with Buffy."

Harmony relaxed slightly. "You're welcome."

"But you're right, I do want something. I want you not to do it again. I need to deal with Buffy on my own, okay?"

Harmony shrugged. "If that's what you want. But if you get yourself put back in a coma, Wes will definitely put a bullet in Buffy before he lets you do all this again."

"Really?" Faith asked, somewhere between hopeful and appalled at the thought of Wes murdering Buffy.

"Really. And he will definitely kill Giles as well and probably Willow and Xander unless he's convinced he can pin the blame for everyone else's death on some third party. So, you know, be careful, okay."

"Well…okay…then."

"He'll do the same thing if you succeed in killing Buffy, of course, except then he'll definitely kill Willow and Xander too. And he'll mope around for a while, saying things like," her voice deepened slightly, "'it had to be done,' 'better not to leave any loose ends,' and 'necessity and morality have very little in common,'" her voice rose back to its normal register, "But don't worry, I know," she smirked, "how to get him out of his funk. And I know he's been wondering what would happen if Buffy were to die again, what with the whole Slayer thing."

"What?" Faith blinked.

"In fact, I guess it's possible that he wasn't joking about the whole making more Slayers thing and if you were to get yourself all knocked up—out—again he'd just keep killing and reviving Buffy over and over again to wake up more and more Slayers…"

"Jesus…"

"Nope. Wesley. And _definitely_ not Jesus. Besides all the other differences, he looks better shirtless."

"That's pretty dark, even for me," Faith said, ignoring the Vampire's blasphemy.

"It may have been a joke. He's very funny. When I can understand what he's saying."

"Jesus. Okay, fine, message received, in gory fucking detail. I won't try to kill Buffy unless I absolutely have to. Are you happy now?"

"Well, Wes isn't here and is off with Buffy's Watcher, after trying to shoot Buffy and succeeding in shooting her new boytoy, so no, not really."

"Yes, I get it, you two are in love and nauseatingly so," Faith sat down heavily, denied her plans of violence and fairly pissed about it. She needed a new plan and wasn't even entirely sure what the point of the fight had been. Revenge for her wounds? Revenge for the Mayor? Jealousy?

That last thought came out of nowhere. She pushed it away for a moment, then pulled it back out to the light. There had been jealousy when she arrived. Hardly surprising. She'd been the new kid on the block a bunch of times and knew that the appeal of the new and exotic faded a _lot_ faster than she might have hoped. And people's interest didn't last, except on a physical level, without that appeal.

Hardly a surprise that the same thing had happened in Sunnydale. Hardly a surprise she'd been jealous of Queen Bee taking back her crown. But she wasn't the new kid on the block and Sunnydale wasn't her block anymore. She had a Watcher, sort of, and friends, sort of, and a life, sort of. All without Buffy in it. What was there to be jealous of? Besides Riley's muscles and square jaw, which she could get the like of in any bar in town.

What the fuck did she really want from Buffy?

 **XXXXX**

"You're still here," Wes noted.

"Yeah…after talking to Harmony, I was a little worried you were planning to war crime Buffy if I went out and picked a fight."

Wes stared at her for a moment, blinking as he attempted to figure out what the hell that meant, then decided he didn't really care. "Okay, then. I think we've got the whole giant flying statute woman issue sorted out and we've helped the Initiative out as much as we can. I've got a murder to carry out, but I can do that anywhere. Is there some reason we need to stay here?"

Faith tried to make up her mind and Harmony jumped in to give her a moment, "How are we getting back? I don't think we asked the government guys to borrow one of their windowless planes and it took us months to get to Cleveland when we drove."

"Very little of that time was actually spent travelling, but that is not a fun drive, I agree. Maybe we could ask for a lift back. If we're ready to get out of here."

"Don't we need to look for that stupid book the Archmage cared about?" Faith asked.

"Yes. But I certainly have no interest in the Initiative knowing what we're interested in, or about the Archmage at all. And they won't have had time to take the steps which will get the local police off your back. Though, if necessary, there are steps we can take on our own on that front. Though they would be expensive and unpleasant."

"Oh-ho, magic the police? What a bad boy you are Wes," Faith put in.

"No. I'm no mind controller or memory eraser. That stuff is _way_ beyond me. But you were never more than a person of interest. Half the reason they're looking for you is that you were obviously the victim of a crime, having been stabbed. They have some indications that you were at the scene of the archaeologist's death, fingerprints which match up with some from your juvie record. But that just puts you in the room at some point. We can explain that if necessary."

"And the deputy mayor? And the courier?"

"The courier's body was never found, that's why I didn't know about it until you told me. As for the deputy mayor, the Mayor quite successfully covered that up, as—" Wes caught Harmony's frantically waving hand behind Faith and did not finish that sentence with his own evaluation of why Faith's surrogate father had covered up her manslaughter. "I don't think we want to deal with the legal system. We have the money to hire a top notch legal team, but still, I don't think that's a good use of our time, so let's avoid them if we can."

"Also, it would tell the Council where I am," Faith pointed out. "And I'm supposed to be avoiding their attention, right? Because _they_ want me arrested or dead, right? Not like you, _right_?"

Her trust was shaken and her mood black. Wes was not so good at reading people, but he could see that. Unfortunately, neither motivational speeches, nor profound declarations of feeling were in his repertoire, generally speaking.

"Yes, that's another problem. Still, you're right, we need to find that book before the Archmage loses patience with us. Well, unless the Cavendishes have turned up something," he reached for his cell phone.

"Wouldn't they have told you?" Faith asked dubiously.

"Jane was clearly a bit distracted by the Judge."

"Sweetie, I think you may have left out an explanation in there, seeing as we don't have any idea what you're talking about," Harmony put in, staring at him.

"Oh, right, I forgot. Giles and I figured it out. It's a Judge. I'm neatly sheltered under the agreement they have with the Watchers, thanks to his actions, which, no, he cannot take back. Only the Watcher's Council can withdraw the protection he granted. They might do so, but not at his request, not these days," he continued, answering the question Faith's eyes were asking. "And certainly not in time, a Judge without her Court is not likely to stay anywhere for long. Though what exactly got her turned onto me is a good question."

"Not as good a question as where we're going to go looking for a magic book and information in Sunnydale," Faith said.

"You'd know better than I. I wasn't terribly effective last time I was here," Wes said.

"Well, there's Willy the Snitch," Faith suggested. "He'll give up anything and everything in exchange for not being punched in the face."

"I guess we can try him. At least word will spread that we're actually asking questions, which might help out with the Archmage. Any other ideas?"

"Well, there is a magic shop in town. I thought it was just a place for Amy and other nerds to hang out, but there might be more to it," Harmony offered.

"Both sound good, but it's still daylight," Wes pointed out.

"You can go without me. I've got a TV and approximately a hundred episodes of Survivor to catch up on," Harmony said. "And if I get bored, there's always pay-per-view," she leered at him playfully.

"We got you your own room, didn't we?" he asked Faith, eyes not leaving his girlfriend.

"Yes. But it's just next door. Don't test the soundproofing, all right? A Slayer needs her sleep,"

"Come on, Faith, don't be jealous," Harmony teased, ensuring that Faith would bring some idiot back with her from Willy's bar.

"Oh, I'm not jealous, just grossed out."

"Well, then, I'd close your eyes," Harmony said, standing on tip-toes to kiss Wes, then slipping away easily when he tried to wrap her in his arms, leaving a smile on his lips. There'd been a time when she never would have done that, when she'd been too uncertain of his interest to ever pull away first. It was good to see her with more confidence, even if it came out by slipping away from his grip and playing with Faith. "Run along and have fun storming the magic shop."

He grinned back at her. "As you wish," he bowed deeply.

Faith missed the reference to the Princess Bride, but made a break for the door before they could become anymore nauseating.

Harmony smirked and gave him a shove back towards the door. "Go. I'll be here when you get back."

"Love you."

"Love you too, now hurry, before Faith makes it into the driver's seat."

Wes blanched and moved fast. They were only on the second floor, but Faith was already in the elevator by the time he reached the stairs. Only pure luck and a family with a small child getting on in the lobby let him reach the parking garage before her and he had to sprint to be in the driver's seat by the time she reached the van. His breathing was erratic as he'd been flat out sprinting, but it came under control fairly fast, pleasing him, given how out of shape he'd been not that long ago.

"So," Faith got into the passenger seat without any comment about his sprinting, his heaving chest or the sweat beading his brow, "do you know where the magic shop is? Because I don't."

Wes considered for a moment. He was not getting out of the car to get directions, as that would leave Faith to claim the driver's seat. Sunnydale wasn't _that_ large, but it would still take a while to search the entire city for one shop. After his moment of consideration passed, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and passed it to Faith, "Call Harmony for directions."

 **XXXXX**

Faith lifted the little old lady who was the current owner of the Magic Box off the ground by her throat. Wes was picking through the items in the back rooms of the store, having slipped past the ongoing confrontation to examine what the owner didn't want to put out in public.

After some consideration, he'd decided not to intervene in the rapidly escalating dispute between the Slayer and the magic shop owner, on the grounds that it would prove he trusted Faith. Besides, if he was wrong, the woman was clearly doomed anyway, having purchased the Magic Box, her painful death by Sunnydale nonsense was assured. He had paused to lock the door, flip the sign to 'closed' and pull down the shades, none of which Faith had bothered with.

There were several unpleasant and probably expensive artifacts and texts in the back room, but none bore any relation to the book he was looking for. A few still went into his bag, as they weren't the sort of thing anyone was going to report missing to the police. At least, anyone who didn't want to spend a great deal of time explaining why they had a collection of extremely illegal Native American artifacts and the bones of small children.

The owner, now loudly protesting her ignorance and innocence, kept her books in hardcopy. Wes pulled them out and began to flick through them. Unfortunately, they didn't contain any actual information about what was sold, only the amounts of money coming in and going out.

Irritating.

The old woman's hands move rhythmically, until Faith bounced her off the wall, stunning her and breaking the pattern before Wes could even warn Faith that her prisoner was attempting to summon power.

Three nonsensical lies, one obvious misdirection and a second failed attempt to cast a spell later, Faith finally admitted that the woman didn't actually know anything about the book, though she did cough up a few names as potential worshippers of the Old Ones. With that done, they let her down and explained why she didn't want to call the police.

The old woman was tough, but even she went pale under Faith's grip and threats. Their visit to Willy's bar was equally unpleasant, though the young man didn't bother with any resistance, simply coughing up everything he knew after one failed attempt to send them into the lair of a Vornax demon.

A bit of cross-referencing and searching and they had a few locations and a lot of names to send to the PI Wes kept on retainer in Sunnydale. They drove by the few addresses they knew, but just saw family homes in reasonable neighborhoods. Not places they wanted to target, at least during the day, before Faith's records were cleared up.

Wes pointed that out when she wanted to go in swinging (well, kicking first, to get the doors open). "How are they going to clear up my record anyway?" Faith asked.

Wes closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "You know, Faith, that was actually explained at some length. You said, 'I understand' and 'Yes, princess,' _several_ times during the explanation."

"Yeah, but I wasn't listening."

"They're quietly making it look like you are an informant for Army CID."

"Which is?"

"Their Criminal Investigate Command."

"Shouldn't that be CIC?"

"Probably, but that's not how it's abbreviated."

"And everyone's going to think I'm a snitch for these misabbreviated fools?"

"Yes."

"Fine. Okay. Are there any other names we can check out right now?"

"There's one more, a grad student studying quantum physics at UC Sunnydale, we can probably get, _via charm not punches_ , his information from the school."

"Fine. You'll take the clerk if she's a woman, I'll take him if he's a man?"

"Sounds good."

"Wait he's a demon-worshiping quantum physicist?"

"The Old Ones aren't exactly demons as we think of them. But yes."

"Feels like there should be a joke in there, but I can't find it. What's this genius's name?"

"Wesley Knox."

"Wesley?"

"It's not a unique name. But let's just call him Knox."

"I don't know, I think it might be fun to have two Wesleys."

"I dare you to say that around Harmony."

Faith's lips curled up, amused despite herself.

 **Author's Note: Work is eating my time. Dragged Away will resume October 7** **th** **. Reviews are always welcome.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

 **Author's Note: This week sucked. I didn't have time to proofread this chapter. Sorry about that.**

"Well, this is interesting," Wes said, stopping them before they entered the study room Knox was supposedly in.

A few quiet questions from Faith to the undergrad working in the Registrar's office had gotten all of Knox's information delivered directly to her breasts. They'd missed his last class, but a few words from Wes had gotten the information of the graduate student's destination from one of his students, though it had taken several minutes for Wes to escape from the woman who wanted to explain just how much of an Anglophile she was. He managed it, before Faith lost her temper and clobbered the woman, but only just. Despite being male, Wes had had to also extract the location of Knox within the four story library from the library clerk as Faith did not appear to be able to understand the library's limitations on voice volume. And now they'd finally found the study room Knox had reserved for himself, only to find the man was not alone.

His colleague was almost certainly not another student, or even a professor. Even those of either ilk who wore suits to the university did _not_ wear suits that expensive to school. Knox himself was dressed as a graduate student who'd just taught a class session, slacks and a collared shirt, but he didn't bother tucking the latter into the former, let alone wear a tie. The man opposite to him was dapper from the tips of his five hundred dollar shoes to the top of the undoubtedly expensive haircut.

The walls were thin, but thick enough that Wes couldn't hear what was going on, at least not without pressing his ear to the door, which didn't seem wise. Faith has better hearing, unsurprisingly and his silent look met with a nod as she focused.

"Mr. Knox, I know you've made an arrangement with the Seattle office, but the Los Angeles branch can more than match their offer and our…influence will ensure that you'll be able to explore your more …esoteric interests without interference from the police. Seattle's a nice city, but their law enforcement is less…understanding of the…realities of our line of work."

"Full court press on the demonic sales pitch," Faith summarized.

"Any idea who the suit works for?"

Faith gave Wes's own suit, only lacking a tie, an amused look. "Somewhere with offices in LA and Seattle. Shush."

She'd missed most of Knox's response, but given that the suit was now explaining the process by which Knox's identifying features could be removed, the grad student had either asked about protection from the Seattle office of this organization, or was being given a remarkably detailed threat explaining why his body would never properly be identified. That was less helpful than it might have been, as the one suggested he was refusing the offer, the other suggested he was accepting.

"Well, that's fascinating. And the Seattle office won't see through that?" Knox asked, with just a tiny hint of smugness in his voice.

"Certainly not, it's our own technique. Only used in the LA office."

"Fascinating, indeed. When do you need an answer, Mr. Murrow?"

"I'll expect your answer by Monday, Mr. Knox. Here's my card."

"The suit's coming out," Faith warned him.

Wes stepped back guiding her into a nearby hallway and standing between Faith and the passing man. "Any idea who they are?" he asked quietly.

"No idea, but the suit gave Knox a card."

"Can you get it?"

"Sure, but wouldn't it be easier to just clobber the suit and take his wallet? We might want Knox able to talk and I can't guarantee that if I knock him out and steal his shit. Though I guess I could just grab him and take it."

"I meant like pick his pocket or something?" Wes asked.

"Oh. No. I don't know how to pick pockets. When I want to steal something I don't bother with subtle."

"Okay, then let's not bother with subtle, knock him over when he comes out and distract him while I help him up, okay? If you're rough enough, then I doubt he'll notice even a pretty clumsy lift."

"Fine."

"Where'd he put the card?"

"Wallet," Faith said, having peaked in the window and seen him pulling out his wallet to store the card.

"Wonderful," Wes's voice was dry as a desert. "I don't suppose he keeps it in—"

"Back pocket of his jeans."

"Not his suit jacket?"

"He's not wearing a suit jacket."

"Well, fine. We'll do this the hard way."

"I'd think you'd hope that it wasn't hard," Faith said with a smirk.

"That was terrible."

"I enjoyed it."

They had a plan. Unfortunately, Knox refused to cooperate by coming out of the study room, instead he simply continued to study. Irritating.

Wes retreated somewhat, picking through the nearest bookshelves, more to pretend he wasn't waiting for Knox than because he was actually interested in the ridiculously large collection of entomology texts. Faith did not even bother to pretend to be interested in books on bugs, until she saw some of the pictures which managed to be both gross and mildly hypnotic.

Before she could break free of the horrific images, Knox finally ducked out and Wes let the book snap shut, shaking her free of the sight of bugs eating one another, or mating, she couldn't tell which and had decided that she didn't want to know and was grateful for the opportunity to not deal with the horror that was entomology.

The collision was more powerful than she'd intended, knocking the man to the ground and bashing his head against a bookshelf so hard he was stunned. At that point, it wasn't so much a pickpocketing lift as it was searching a semi-conscious body as Wes lifted it off the ground and supported it while it groaned and looked around in confusion. Unfortunately, the need to support the man made it difficult to get the wallet out and open, until Faith decided that watching Wes hold up the limp man was beginning to become more pathetic than amusing and moved to help. A few moments later, Wes slid the wallet back into Knox's pants and stepped away, letting him fall forward onto the carpeted floor and they were away, with Wes pausing to briefly mention that there was someone passed out in the entomology section to one of the library workers before they left.

"Well?" Faith asked, more to see if all this wasted time had been worth it.

"He's not our guy."

"How do you know?"

"He's going to work for Wolfram and Hart."

"Which makes him not our guy because?"

"Nasty, demon lawyers—"

"But you repeat yourself."

"Yes, yes, very amusing. But Wolfram and Hart are famously enemies of the Old Ones. No worshipper of the Old Ones would work for Wolfram and Hart and they'd be killed in a messy fashion if they tried."

"Yeah, but most demon worshippers are doomed to be killed messily. It's not exactly a job for people who want to live to retirement. If the Slayers don't get you, the demons will," Faith pointed out.

"That's true," Wes admitted. "I suppose it's possible he's some sort of spy, but even if so, he won't know about our book, or much about the worshippers, after all, he'll get caught and interrogated eventually," Wes pointed out.

"Yeah. You know how to get in touch with the Seattle branch of that law firm?"

"I can find out, why?"

"Well, he's either a spy for demons on demon lawyers, or working for demon lawyers, right?"

"Yesss…" Wes's voice was nervous as he tried to see where exactly Faith was leading him.

"Seems to me that a phone call warning the demon lawyers will solve the problem of Knox, whether he's a demon worshipper, or just a demon employee."

Wes cocked his head. "Yeah, I think that would do it. Good idea. I can't believe I didn't think of that."

Faith glared at him for a moment, then realized that Wes was not going to realize that he'd just insulted her. For a moment she considered flattening him, or ignoring it, but for once in her life, she decided to be direct, with her words rather than fists. "I have lots of good ideas, even ones you wouldn't think of, princess," her voice was somewhere between caustic and sarcastic and mostly concealed any other emotional reaction.

Wes started to react to the tone, either defensively, or sarcastically, he wasn't sure which, then remembered that Harmony wasn't here to soften things up for him. Instead, for once in his life, he stopped, considered what he said, then turned to face Faith. "Yes, you do."

They stood there for a moment. Faith began to blush and looked away from Wes. "Okay, that's enough of that, let's get out of here." She didn't thank him. He didn't apologize. But it was enough. More than she'd expected. More than she deserved. But Wes didn't give empty compliments.

"This has not been our most productive afternoon ever," Wes noted.

"Nope. But it's about to get excitinger," Faith said, deliberately distracting him into a conversation about the fact that 'excitinger' wasn't a word, in order to keep him from asking what was going to make it more exciting.

He fell for it briefly, but stopped when he saw Buffy making her way over to them.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Don't worry, lots of witnesses, she's not going to start anything," Faith said.

Wes did not say that it wasn't really _Buffy_ starting something that worried him. Given that he'd just, almost, had to apologize, he wasn't about to put himself in a position where he had to, actually, apologize. Instead he slid a step to the right, opening space for Faith to move and splitting Buffy's attention as the other Slayer approached rapidly.

"Buffster! Good to see you!" Faith's tone was friendly, almost honest, but her body language was anything but friendly. Faith didn't usually talk that much with her hands, but now they were waving around, not coincidentally in position to protect her head from a strike.

"Faith. Wesley. Riley's going to be all right, thanks for asking."

Buffy's sarcasm was a savage thing. Faith ignored it and played dumb, as she'd had a _lot_ of practice doing. "We didn't ask, B."

"I know that," Buffy grabbed hold of her temper with both hands. "You should have."

"As a matter of courtesy, perhaps. However, I would be concerned it might mislead you into thinking I felt either guilt, or concern. Seeing as how thoroughly and easily Ms. St. Croix deceived and manipulated you, I wouldn't want to do so, _accidentally_ ," Wes's hostility was open and unsubtle, drawing Buffy's attention away from the other Slayer.

"Wow! Who knew you actually could become an even bigger ass?" Buffy asked, matching his hostility with her own, fueled by his aggression almost as much as by the memory of Riley going down on top of her.

"I did!" Faith said, jumping up and down, filled with false enthusiasm and aiming to draw Buffy's hostility to a more…resistant target. A nearby freshman tripped over a bench he hadn't noticed, being somewhat distracted by the jumping and the bouncing. Faith and Buffy's eyes both flicked to the movement and the sound of the impact, then back onto each other, focused and serious. Faith's lips were curved into a smirk, however, infuriating the other Slayer.

"I know you want to be the center of attention, Faith, but I'd think you'd know better than to pull that nonsense here. Wouldn't want the cops to figure out who you are."

"Oh, don't worry about it. The actual government, you know, the ones not working for the incompetent, corrupted secret schmucks you thought were in charge, are helping me out with that misunderstanding. Wes worked out the deal. You didn't think we came here _just_ to save you from your own gullibility?"

Wes was continuing to circle slightly, not quite far enough that Buffy couldn't see them both, but enough that one step would take him out of her line of sight, not that that would necessarily help, but if he stayed out of reach, even her blind-fighting abilities wouldn't let her take him down until well after he'd put three shots in her back. Now, doing that in full view of everyone would have consequences, but consequences were the result of choice and he'd chosen Faith over Buffy.

There was movement behind him, towards him, driving him back towards Faith. He didn't take his eyes off Buffy, but retreated at an angle that let him see who was coming up behind him. Willow, with Giles and Xander. With Oz apparently gone, this was all the forces Buffy could muster easily. That was reassuring, suggested none of them were going after Harmony.

"Well, well, well, gang's all here. What do you want?" Faith asked, noting the new arrivals.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

 **Author's Note: And I'm back.**

"That was our question," Giles put in, eyes flickering between Wes and Faith as he tried to figure out exactly who was in charge. Cold fury behind his eyes said that someone had explained who Wes had been trying to shoot, but he still managed to keep his focus on both of them. He continued to close on Wes, trying to get within arm's reach in case the younger man went for his gun.

"We've done what we came to do, haven't we Wes?" Faith asked, looking over at her Watcher as if the quartet of angry people was no concern of hers.

"Well, let's see," Wes raised one finger, "We dealt with a renegade Watcher; we helped out the US government; and we got to have a lot of…fun with our old…acquaintances. Yes, I think we've done everything we came to do. So, what did you come to do?" he asked Buffy.

"Just wanted to see you off, back to Cleveland," Buffy said.

As Wes opened his mouth to respond, Faith interjected a defiant question regarding Buffy's authority to exile them from an entire town. She phrased it somewhat more bluntly and with rather more profanity than that, but that was the gist of it.

"This is my town," Buffy responded simply.

"I didn't know you could own a town. But I'm not a fancy college girl," Faith countered. "Wes, have you ever heard about anyone owning a town?"

"Not in modern times. However," he flicked his attention (or as much of it as he could spare from the awkward dance he and Giles were engaged in) over to Buffy, "assuming you're willing to reciprocally recognize our authority over Cleveland, I suppose it might be possible to convince me of your ownership. Tell me, what influence have you gained over the town government?"

"What?" Buffy asked, surprised.

"In Cleveland, we have significant contacts throughout the professional and elected personnel of the city government. Now, obviously you were not able to gain any influence under the previous administration," Wes did not look at Faith, or name the previous administration's leader, but merely hurried along, "however this is a new administration and the old certainties have cracked. You've had months. I heard there was a special election," he didn't look at Faith, the cause of the absence of the deputy mayor, but kept his eyes on Buffy, the cause of the absence of the mayor, "which brought in some new blood. What steps have you taken to gain influence?"

"I'm the Slayer, not a politician!" Buffy snapped.

"Ah, yes. Well, the systems the previous administration put in place still seem to be keeping most things quiet, so I suppose you don't necessarily need influence to hush things up. But what about contacts? Obviously you've got some contacts in the police department and other agencies to inform you if anything demony comes up?"

"Like the Sunnydale PD knows anything," Xander leapt to the defense of his friends.

"They know when bodies are found having 'fallen on barbeque tongs,' or without their internal organs, or ritually sacrificed. And you know that, given how much of your news came from the news, or rumors when we worked together. The Powers that Be may make sure that you spot the stuff needed to prevent the end of the world, but for everything else, you're on your own. Therefore, your actual effectiveness depends on what you can find out on your own."

"Because saving the world isn't effective?" Willow defended her best friend.

"Correct," Wes said.

"You have another one stashed away somewhere?" Buffy asked, sardonically.

"No. But the world's in no danger. So your efforts are thoroughly pointless."

And now they were all looking at him like he was a crazy person, including Faith. That was a little disturbing, but he didn't flinch under their stares. This was an academic question and he was actually quite good at answering those, once they were asked. He waited in silence for one of them to ask the question they were clearly all thinking and they waited for him to backtrack.

Xander broke first, probably because he didn't entirely understand what they were doing. "I'm pretty sure if Angel had woken that demon statue thing, the world would have ended, right Giles?" the example was not chosen at random as Xander's antipathy towards the Vampire clearly hadn't waned. He still threw in that request for confirmation from Giles, though.

Buffy shot a covertly troubled glance at Giles as well, undoubtedly somewhat troubled by the suggestion that she'd filleted someone she loved unnecessarily. Giles for his part, was almost as confused as the rest of them, but he hid it better. "Of course," he said with absolute certainty.

"Come now, Giles, you and yours have saved the world what, twice a year or so? For the last three years? At one of the many Hellmouths on this planet? On a planet _billions_ of years old? When just a single victory for the other side would mean the end for us? Seriously? They never got lucky? Does that seem likely to you?"

Giles's lips tightened slightly and he straightened under the gaze of everyone else as they finally considered the broader scope of the universe they lived in. Those gazes demanded answers. "The traditional answer is divine providence. More mundanely, we know that the lower planes wish to destroy us, it seems likely that intervention by the denizens of the higher planes, those you call the Powers that Be, are intervening to assist us. Given that we've never seen them act directly, it seems most likely that they can provide only more…indirect assistance."

"And they _never_ made a mistake? Not in the entire history of our planet?" 

"Not in the entire history of Human civilization, at least," Giles agreed.

"Then, do you really think they don't have contingency plans in place in case Buffy missed her stroke with Angel?" Wes asked, mostly ignoring Giles's response. "Or Faith hadn't decapitated the Sisterhood of Jhe's Shaman? If they never make a mistakes, then their predictive abilities must be infallible and free will is an illusion. If they do make mistakes, but have contingency plans, then our individual actions focused on saving the world are thoroughly pointless as that result is assured anyway."

"The final result, perhaps, but if a thousand people die preventing the apocalypse, that is _worse_ than if we can stop it ourselves with no casualties," Giles argued.

"Certainly and if I stumble over someone who's about to be sacrificed to end the world, sure," he shrugged, "I'll try to save them, but the allegedly apocalyptic nature of allegedly apocalyptic events skew the cost-benefit analysis. Any cost is worth paying to save six billion lives."

"What cost?" Xander asked. "We've saved the world, but haven't lost anyone!"

That was sort of true, for a given value of 'lost' which meant 'killed' and 'anyone' which meant 'any member of the core group.' Willow shot Xander a look, remembering Jesse, but that hadn't involved an apocalypse.

"How much time, blood and sweat have your spent on preventing apocalypses?" Wes countered. "Opportunity costs are true costs. You run around, year after year, scrambling to prevent events which will not occur and so surrender the opportunity to build something useful, something productive."

"Wait. Didn't Cordelia say that in the world Anya created, the Master won and was well on his way to conquering the world?" Willow asked. "Certainly I was dead, and Vampirized," she flushed a little bit, "and sort of gay."

Wes rolled his eyes. "Putting aside the fact that we have no actual evidence that that ever truly occurred, it is transparent that the Powers that Be would either be aware that that would be undone, or arranged that it be undone, depending on whether you believe them to possess foresight or merely extensive preparations. The complaint you want to make is that my argument is—"

"Not falsifiable!" Willow interjected. "What you're seeing could easily be explained by the many worlds theory and survivorship bias!"

Xander and Buffy looked at Willow, then at each other. Buffy mouthed the word 'easily?' at Xander, who shrugged and shook his head.

"That is the obvious concern," Wes agreed. This time Faith joined the other two in the confused and disbelieving glance at what the others felt was 'obvious'. "However, your theory is no more falsifiable than mine and assumes the Powers that Be took no action, which, given the actions we know they've taken here, seems improbable."

"You ascribe perfect success to the Powers that Be," Giles interjected. "When both your theories could be correct. The Powers that Be do their best to protect this world, but fail occasionally. This universe is simply one where they have not failed."

"And therefore we must treat every apocalypse as potentially apocalyptic? You are free to do so if you wish, but it seems clear to me, given that the Powers and these demonic forces are at war, and have been for the entire history of the universe, that the Powers have far more force than they've brought to bear. After all, the demons certainly do. So, what are we in that scenario? A Peninsular War. A low-level conflict to bleed the demonic forces and distract their leadership."

"A reasonable interpretation. Alternatively, they've provided us all the forces they can spare, or choose to spare, and we must defend ourselves, just as the Spaniards had to in the actual Peninsular War," Giles argued.

Willow joined the confused staring group.

"Both options are possible," Wes agreed. "But if that was the case, why bother with the pretense that demons don't exist? If we're truly on the edge of disaster at all times, why not fully militarize us? Your Initiative, incompetent thought they are, demonstrate that such forces can be effective. But such a society would not be an attractive target for the enemies of the Powers, now would it? No, we must be kept weak enough to be prey, but strong enough not to fall. I refuse to play that game."

"So what game are you playing?" Buffy jumped in.

Wes flicked a glance at Faith. "I keep my word and seek to build something strong enough to weather whatever storms the enemy, or the Powers can throw at us."

"Ambitious," Giles put in.

"More so than sitting in your apartment, surrounded by books you've already read," Wesley agreed.

"You talk a big game, but where's this, so-strong, thing you've built?" Xander asked mockingly.

"Cleveland," Wes answered simply. Giles asked a question with his eyes he wasn't willing to ask with his mouth. "Now, to be fair, Sunnydale's hard, because there aren't really any powerbases to suborn. Everything's so fluid… It would be hard to do here what we did in Cleveland."

"It would be hard to do anything here the way it's done in Cleveland," Buffy, California girl, born and raised, joked.

"True," Wes agreed, before Faith could find a way to take that as an insult. "But I'd think you'd know that different isn't either better or worse. Still, maybe hearing how we did it in Cleveland may be helpful."

"Or at least help them figure out how to try to smash it, if they want to," Faith put in.

"Oh, if they want to fight on our home-ground, then they'll regret it," Wes responded, with a sharp smile.

"So what did you do?" Giles asked, derailing the fight.

"The Scourge were the problem at the time. Cleveland had a relatively stable power structure with four territorial powers, one business power, one religious power and one mystical power. The Scourge showed up and assaulted one of the territorial powers, driving a large clan of vampires out of their home, massacring many of them. So, I—" he corrected himself, even though Harmony wasn't there, "we made common cause with them, offered to work together against the Scourge. They agreed. When we were ready, we double-crossed them before they could double-cross us."

"How?" Giles asked.

"We convinced them we needed their help for the final assault on the survivors of the Scourge and that a daytime attack would be best, as we'd have the element of surprise. They were very surprised that we'd modified the cargo container that we were transporting them in to open from the top, into the noonday sun in the middle of an open field. Poof, no more vampires. Then we cleaned up the rest of the Scourge and reclaimed the mansion that had been the base of the operation."

He paused for a moment, some part of him expecting Harmony to jump in with a complaint about how literal the clean-up had ended up being as the Scourge had taken the view that all the Vampires' stuff was degenerate nonsense, which needed to be burned. She was still engaged in 'improving' some portions of the mansion, which had had their furnishings stripped out and burned. Usually, she tried to blame him for that, as if he were limiting her spending, when really she just wasn't sure what to do with some of the rooms, having run out of ideas and people to put in them a while back (though not before creating a _very_ pink unicorn room as her own private space; and, to be fair, an extremely nice office as his private space).

"And so there we were, all the informants and punks working for the, now-dead Vamps. All of whom were looking for a new payday with their former employers all crispy. We took over that network, which provides a lot of information and a lot of support when we need it. That, plus some information and resources which could be used to make friends amongst the police and the powers that be."

"Not exactly feasible here," Giles pointed out.

"Isn't it?" Wes glanced over at Willow and Xander, before returning to Giles. "Much though I disliked their involvement, Buffy recruited four people the first year or two, then no one new. You know how to recruit people, you just aren't doing it. You," this time he did look at Willow and Xander, "recruited a large number of people to fight the Mayor. So why is it you're all alone again? For fuck's sake, they don't need to be in the field with you, but do they even know how to get in touch with you if they run into Vamps wherever they've ended up?"

"No," Faith interjected, surprising both of the former Watchers.

"Sorry, no, what?" Wes asked.

"No, both options aren't possible. If they were, you wouldn't take the position you did, you couldn't. The risk would be too great, so what are they missing?" Faith asked, dragging the conversation back to its earlier point, having ignored the issue of building an organization as irrelevant and boring.

Wes paused for a moment, thinking, then shrugged. "It's obvious if you know what to look for in the Watchers' diaries."

"Not so obvious I noticed it."

"Really? How many times has a brand new Slayer, just called, had to save the world? Almost twenty percent of the time it's the first thing they do, coincidentally the Slayer awakes in the perfect place to save the world. Divine providence some Watchers called it. But it reads to me like Human sacrifice, to get the right piece in the right place at the right time, especially in the times before easy transcontinental travel. Given the actions I believe they've taken, staying away from them and their machinations seems the obviously correct course of action."

"You can't seriously think that someone is sacrificing Slayers just to manipulate the spell which creates them, which can't be done, by the by, to make sure that the new Slayer awakens elsewhere?" Giles asked.

"I think that the Powers that Be have done so, yes. However, this discussion is beginning to bore me. Are we going to fight, or what?" he asked the question of Giles, but kept one eye on Buffy and the other on Faith.

"Don't want to talk anymore?" Xander asked. "Because you know you're wrong?"

"Because I shouldn't have started this conversation. It invites you to reach the same conclusions I have," Wes snapped, which he really shouldn't have said and realized he shouldn't have said the moment he'd finished speaking.

"What conclusions are those?" Willow asked, a moment before Giles did.

"I'm not going to answer that."

"Not even to me?" Faith asked.

"Sure, but not in front of them. If you choose to dispirit them by sharing my perspective with them, I certainly can't stop you, but I'd ask that you don't."

"No decisions now," Faith said.

"Fair enough. If we aren't fighting, can we get out of here?"

"You realize that not telling us is worse than telling them, because they'll imagine worse things than whatever it is," Giles put in, trying to pretend he wasn't one of them.

"That's what you think," Wes said, voice warning the older man not to pursue this. Then a smile broke his mask and he laughed. "Sorry. The looks on your faces…I couldn't make it through. I'll have to come up with some other way to torture you lot for being a bunch of self-righteous dickbags who led Harmony to her death then stabbed her in the heart. Don't worry, I'll think of something."

His last words passed over them as he turned on his heel and stalked away, daring them to attack him from behind. Faith slid automatically into position to watch his back as he stalked away

They made it a good ten steps before Faith asked, "So what's the dispiriting thing you didn't want to tell them?"

"Don't believe I made it up just to mess with them?"

"Nope."

"My conclusion was simple, that the Watchers Council, like the Slayers themselves is nothing more than a tool by which the Powers that Be can keep our world a warzone and that any organization, or person which gains enough power risks being coopted into the same fate. Defeating someone with their power is not a feasible option."

"So, life is pointless? That was your conclusion?"

"So we should be aware that we won't be allowed to win. That is not a reasonable goal. Making the world incrementally better is the best we can hope for."

"Wasn't that always true?" Faith asked.

"Maybe you were more realistic than I. I always had…higher expectations of what I should be able to accomplish."

"You mean your daddy had higher expectations on what you should be able to accomplish," Faith noted.

Wes almost walked into a bench, then spent a long moment staring at Faith's back as she continued to walk as if she hadn't left him behind.

"I pay attention, to some things."

"Evidently," Wes said, stepping up onto the bench and hurrying up to catch up with the Slayer.

"It's not like it's hard to see. I can spot a man with daddy issues a mile away," Faith said.

"Given the men you choose to get involved with, I have to say that that doesn't seem terribly likely," Wes countered.

"Oh, you think I don't fuck'em just because they've got those issues. No, no, no, I pick them out because of their daddy issues." Faith paused for a moment, then glanced at Wes, remembering what she'd said about him and about herself and decided not to say anything.

Wes stared at her, amused. "Okaaaaa—"

He was cut off by the thud of the massive ivory Judge dropping out of the sky directly in front of them, scattering students and professors alike.

"Saved by the giant demon thingy," Faith muttered to herself, sliding into position between Wes and the ambusher.

"Oh, right, that…" Wes muttered to himself.

 **Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Reviews are always welcome.**


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